


Sleepless in New Terra

by warren_space



Series: New Terra-tory [1]
Category: The Expanse (TV), The Expanse Series - James S. A. Corey
Genre: BDSM, Book 4: Cibola Burn, Canon Compliant, Casual Sex, Cheating, Combination of Book and Series, Dirty Talk, Dirty Thoughts, Dom/sub, Fantasy Foursome, Friends With Benefits, Implied/Referenced Foursome, Implied/Referenced Gangbang, Implied/Referenced Prostitution, Implied/Referenced Threesome, M/M, Masturbation, More Tags Will Apply, Multi, Open Relationships, Rough Sex, Sexual Fantasy, Sharing a Bed, The Expanse Season 4, fantasy threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:01:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 30,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23974912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warren_space/pseuds/warren_space
Summary: Miller won't let Holden sleep on Ilus. Amos helps.
Relationships: Amos Burton/Jim Holden, Amos Burton/Jim Holden/Alex Kamal/Naomi Nagata (mentioned), Amos Burton/Jim Holden/Naomi Nagata (mentioned), Amos Burton/Others (mentioned), There is basically no one Amos does not think about having sex with
Series: New Terra-tory [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1745149
Comments: 57
Kudos: 135





	1. they fell in love the way holden fell asleep. they didn't.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a Holden/Amos fic, but there are a lot of other ships mentioned. They are mostly mentioned briefly but I wanted to warn for them in case anyone is squicked by anything. Wow, 'squicked' is a term I haven't heard in a while, huh. Here's a list that I might have to update as the fic goes on: 
> 
> Naomi/Holden (compliant with canon), Holden/Amos/Naomi (graphic sexual fantasy), Holden/Miller, Naomi/Drummer, Holden/Amos/Alex/Naomi, Prax/Amos, Amos/Wei, Holden/Elvi, Amos/Elvi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 1 was originally posted as 4 chapters, but switching chapters every time the POV changed proved unsustainable for the rest of the fic, so I condensed them together. Regrettably in doing so a couple comments got deleted from Chapter 4, sorry if that was you!
> 
> chapter title references john green's novel the fault in our stars.

###  **Holden**

The bags under Captain James Holden’s bright blue eyes were weighed down with more than just the force of Ilus’s oppressive gravity. Constant conflicts arose on Ilus like wildfires and Holden was powerless to stifle them. Still, as was both his well-recorded personal brand and his current job description, he waved and stomped and spat and pissed and did all he could to try. And so, at the end of a day that felt long because it was hard and also because it _was,_ he was exhausted. 

Detective Josephus Miller, being the parasitic alien apparition that he was, didn’t give a shit about whether Holden wanted him around or not. No, not Miller. The Investigator. _Miller probably wouldn’t have cared, either,_ Holden’s fatigued and frustrated subconscious provided uselessly. Either way, the relentless ghost pried at the edges of Holden’s mind and made it impossible to sleep. 

“Could you kindly leave me the fuck alone?” Holden spoke, finally coming to terms with the fact that the voice inside his brain couldn’t be ignored away. 

“I kinda need you, kid.” 

“And I’m deeply flattered by that,” Holden snarked, “but I kinda need sleep.” 

“You are so insufferably human.” 

“You are so insufferably _not._ ”

“Yeah. So anyway, here’s what I’m thinking…” 

Holden covered his ears with his pillow, aware of its futility to drown out the sound, but comforted by the humanness of the petulant gesture. He resigned himself to the reality of another sleepless night on Ilus. 

✧✧✧

As soon as the pale light shone through the window signaling daytime, or at the very least, the sliver of time before the community woke up that was no longer night, Holden broke himself free of the prison that Miller had turned his room into. He settled at his provisional office in the commissary to read the reports and demands from Fred Johnson, Chrisjen Avasarala, and Royal Charter Energy that cluttered the inbox of his hand terminal. He’d have had trouble focusing on something he cared about, let alone facts and figures he couldn’t interpret from RCE and strongly worded offerings of useless advice from politicians. 

“Mornin’ Cap,” greeted Amos. The blunt salutation startled Holden. He didn’t know how much time he’d been sitting there, but he figured it must be pretty late in the morning if Amos had woken up of his own accord. Of course, on a planet with 30 hour days and no central infrastructure, he supposed the time of day didn’t mean much. He wondered absently what time it might be on Earth before resigning to the fact that it couldn’t matter less. For his own sanity, and because his Earther brain required that he forced things into terms it understood, he decided it was about 11 am. 

Holden looked at Amos, acknowledging the big man’s presence but not returning the greeting. It might’ve been impolite to someone else, but the familiarity that had grown between the two over the years had eradicated the need for pleasantries. Besides, it’s not like Amos was in any position to comment on another person’s social etiquette. 

“You look like hell,” accused Amos, but there was no malice in it. 

“Always the flatterer, you.” 

“Sorry, princess. You’re the belle of the fucking ball.” 

“Yeah, well, you…” Holden looked at Amos. Maybe it was the exhaustion talking, but Amos looked good. Neither man had thought to pack a razor for their stay on New Terra, so Amos’s beard was filling out nicely. It suited him. That, and his typically-buzzed hair had grown a bit. Somehow he looked softer and more rugged at the same time. More human, maybe. If Holden considered that his arms looked nice in just his under shirt, he would never admit to it. Sleeplessness does crazy things to the mind. He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. 

“James Holden, paragon of wit.” Holden simply groaned. Amos smirked. “Did you sleep at all last night?” 

“Idon’twannatalkaboutit,” Holden slurred. 

“You know, you’re no use to me if you die of exhaustion.”

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.” 

“Go take a nap. I’ll cover for you.”

“Yeah? You’ll mediate conflicts with Murtry?” 

“I can promise there will be no conflicts with Murtry when you wake up.” Holden didn’t need him to pantomime shooting a gun to understand the threat in that, but Amos did it anyway. 

“Thanks, but no thanks.” 

They sat wordlessly for a little while, which was always at least a little bit uncomfortable for Holden. He didn’t think he’d ever get fully accustomed to Amos’s penchant for stony silence. He was the kind of guy who talked through the quiet. Amos didn’t say anything unless he had something to say. Holden respected that. In his awkwardness, he looked over at Amos, who appeared content to be fascinated by his fingernails. _Amos has very big hands,_ he thought. Followed by a _What the ever-loving fuck was that thought?_

Amos caught Holden staring and looked at him with a puzzled expression. The silence didn’t appear to have been awkward for him until that moment. 

“You’ve been lookin’ at me all weird. Is there somethin’ you gotta say?” his tone shifted from amicable to threatening like a flip-and-burn. 

“Looking at you how?” Holden feigned ignorance with little success. 

“I don’t know. I ain’t real good at reading what people’s faces mean. But when a guy who’s been lookin’ at me one way for years starts lookin’ at me different, I notice that shit. What’s your deal?” 

“I don’t know, man. I’m tired.” It wasn’t a lie. No one could say that he wasn’t tired. It just maybe didn’t technically answer the question. Amos didn’t appear satisfied with the non-answer, but he didn’t push it further, and for that, Holden was eternally grateful. What do you even say to that, anyway? _Sorry I was looking at you weird, brother, I was just thinking about your big hands and how they’d feel around my neck?_ Since when was he even into that? He decided to tell himself that he wasn’t into that, that it was just the sleepless night talking, and to never think about it again. 

“What’s keepin’ you awake, anyway?” Amos pried through a mouthful of a breakfast replacement bar, dropping the subject. “I mean, besides all the bullshit keeping everyone awake.” 

“You wanna play therapist right now?” 

“I got nothin’ else to do.” 

“Since when do you ask personal questions?” 

“Since I got nothin’ else to do.” That was as good a reason as any, Holden supposed. 

“It’s Miller. Fucker won’t leave me alone. Whenever there’s no one with me, he’s there, talking nonsense and being an asshole.”

“‘He ever helpful?” 

“Not lately. Sometimes I think he’s trying to be, but he’s so fucking cryptic it may as well be Yiddish.” Amos squinted his eyes and tilted his head. Holden couldn’t tell if he was trying to come up with something to say or if he just didn’t know what Yiddish was. Neither was helpful. “Guess I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” 

Amos sat with that for a while, and then said something stupid. 

“You want me to punch you really hard?” he offered. 

“I’m not into that kind of thing,” Holden joked, and immediately regretted it. If Amos was at all onto Holden’s weird new thing for him, that might’ve given it away. _I don’t have a_ thing _for Amos,_ Holden’s mind insisted. 

“Yeah, I’m sure you’re incredibly vanilla, Cap,” Holden raised an eyebrow at that, then decided not to be offended by it, if only because arguing with it would give too much away. “Just thinkin’ maybe I could knock you out. As a favor, you know.”

“How generous.” 

“You’d get some sleep.”

“Being unconscious is not the same as sleeping.”

“Close enough.”

“I’ll let you know if it comes to that,” Holden resolved, not fully disqualifying the idea. Sometimes desperate times call for letting a very large, very attractive man punch you in the face. With his very big hands. 

During the subsequent silence, Holden watched the door of the commissary swing as colonists floated in and out. He watched more than one individual order alcohol at the bar, as if it wasn’t before noon. He supposed it technically wasn’t. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. He hoped that no one came in looking for him, and then hoped that they did. He was getting uncomfortable sitting with Amos and his toned arms and his nice beard and his big hands. He was fucked. 

###  **Amos**

After drinking a lot of the beanless garbage water this planet called coffee, and dosing himself with what Amos believed to be methamphetamines, Holden was functional enough to start his day, which meant Amos had to listen to a lot of boring bullshit he didn’t care about and wasn’t allowed to kill anybody. Fun. 

They went to some kind of town meeting full of angry people who were angry about the wrong things. Amos paid as much attention as he could muster, which was never much. He less-than-half-listened to a presentation by the cute doctor with the crush on Holden. That’s funny. Someone should tell her that isn’t ever going to happen. Holden would punish himself for months if he so much as thought about cheating on Naomi, and that would only happen if he somehow managed to find somebody hotter than her, which was unlikely. Holden was fuckable enough, but Naomi was still out of his league. Amos wondered if the girl (Ellie? Elsie? El….mi?) would try anything. Maybe, when Holden said no, she’d be down to settle for him. He spent a little time with the fantasy of letting a cute girl call him ‘Holden’ while he fucked her from behind. Not entirely unsexy. 

A couple times during the day, Amos got a good look at Holden, and had thoughts he didn’t know what to do with. Not sexual thoughts, those were pretty par for the course. Holden had a nice little body, a perky ass and big pouty lips. That was enough for Amos to consider putting it in him with some regularity. What confused Amos were the thoughts about how tired and miserable he looked. _Worry,_ he imagined Holden would call it. 

Typically, Amos’s thoughts about people existed in two camps that were not mutually exclusive. He had violent thoughts and he had horny thoughts. Sometimes his violent thoughts were horny and sometimes his horny thoughts were violent. Holden, and he supposed the rest of the Rocinante crew, occupied a weird new third space that he didn’t quite have the vocabulary for. Not that he wouldn’t fuck them. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about them in that way, individually and all at the same time. It’s just that he would consider how the big Roci crew orgy he planned in his head when he jerked off might affect their family dynamic. Not enough to not think about it, but enough to not suggest it out loud to anybody. That he’d care about that even a little bit was new. Maybe that’s what family is. People you’d fuck under other circumstances, but wouldn’t because you love them. He was sure Holden wouldn’t see it that way, but it’s what he had the bandwidth to understand. 

Worrying about someone was definitely new, and he didn’t like it. Amos tended to abandon thoughts he deemed useless for survival, but he couldn’t shake the worry off. Holden was a big boy who could handle himself. Still, every time Amos looked at his drooping eyes, he felt a pang of something like sadness. Not quite sadness. More like sympathetic exhaustion. 

He resolved to stop thinking about it, and to shift his focus to Chandra Wei. He knew how to deal with those kinds of thoughts. She was a lot like him. Big and tough and not the kind of person you want to fuck with. Wei was like the female version of himself, and he was just narcissistic enough to find that hot. As he stood looking tough next to Holden while the mediator did whatever boring mediation he had to do after the meeting, he fantasized about all the kinky shit Wei might let him do to her. Or, he supposed, the kinky shit she might want to do to him. He wasn't picky. 

But where there’s Wei, there’s Murtry, which is messier than he wanted to deal with. He wondered what Holden would think about him sleeping with the enemy. Was Wei his enemy? Holden might think so. Holden would probably question the moral character of a person who aligns herself with a villain like Murtry. Then again, Holden chose to align himself with a villain like Amos, and Holden was the most moral person he knew. It would be a lot easier to use Holden as a blueprint for empathetic human behavior if he was a little more consistent. Though, he supposed there was nothing more human than moral inconsistency. 

He didn’t know when he started caring what Holden would think about the people he slept with, but chose not to analyze it. Apparently he cared, and if he couldn’t stop caring, there was no use in scrutinizing it. 

After a couple hours of whatever Holden had to do, they went back to the commissary. Holden downed another cup of coffee. Amos got a shot of whatever piss passed for liquor at the bar and a large cup of water that he set in front of Holden. It was as tender a gesture as he was capable of. Holden nodded his thanks. 

The companionable silence didn’t bother Amos, but it seemed to bother Holden. Amos never got that about people. What’s the point in running your mouth if you ain’t got nothing to say? But Amos was working on doing some version of caring about Holden, so he tried to fill the space. 

“So if Miller won’t leave you alone, how do you jerk off? Does he watch?” Holden’s face told him that wasn’t the thing to say. Holden let out an exasperated breath and put his head in his hands. It must be really bad if it shut Holden up that easy. Sometimes he thinks the only thing that’ll shut Holden up is a dick in his mouth. That’s not helpful. Hot, though. He didn’t know if he should keep talking. He did anyway. 

“Seems like the kind of guy who would like to watch. I think he had the hots for you. Did you ever hook up? Like when he was alive?” Holden’s scowl either said ‘no’ or ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ which didn’t give him any information. 

“Is he like a hallucination or can you touch him? Could come in handy, if you know what I mean.” Amos made an obscene gesture with his fist. He had abandoned all pretext of helping fill silence or distract Holden. Now he was just fucking with him.

“What will it take to make you stop talking?” Holden snapped. Amos considered all the dirty things he could say to that and decided against all of them. 

“Just trying to help,” he lied. 

###  **Holden**

Amos was getting on Holden’s nerves. What gave him the right to suddenly be this attractive? Usually, Holden found the obscenities Amos spewed worthy of nothing more than an eye-roll and the occasional middle finger, but today he found himself wanting to lick the dirty words right out of his mouth. _Who thinks that?_ He wondered if Amos talked dirty in bed. 

The problem wasn’t that he minded listening to Amos describe the protomolecule apparition that was ruining his life as “a sex doll that can do all the work.” The problem was that it somehow turned him on. The idea of sex with the ghost of his friend was repulsive, but the filthy words that dripped from Amos’s tongue as he described it in upsetting detail were an aphrodisiac in his veins. 

The _real_ problem was that Amos had been right about Holden not being able to jerk off unless he wanted to let Miller watch. Or someone else. Amos said he wanted to help. Maybe he could make himself useful and sit in the room while Holden took care of his little problem. Or maybe he could lend a hand. _Like a sex doll that can do all the work,_ his mind supplied. He hated himself for it. 

✧✧✧

It was 4 am when he and Amos decided to go to bed. Not because it was actually 4 am, but because it was about 4 hours after everyone else seemed to have gone to bed, which he figured qualified as something like 4 am. As soon as Amos disappeared into his own room, Miller appeared. 

“For fucks’ sake.” 

“Good to see you, too, kid,” Holden rolled his eyes and sat down on his cot. 

“What will it take for you to let me sleep?” The ghost ignored that. 

“So it appears that you have a crush on the big violent guy.” 

“Keep it down.”

“He can’t hear me.” 

“Yeah, but I can, and you’re annoying.” 

“That’s not a denial.”

“I’m in love with my girlfriend.”

“Also not a denial.”

“You’re in my head, right? You know all of my deepest, darkest secrets. What would be the point in denying it to you?” 

“So you admit it? You have a crush on him?” 

“I wouldn’t call it a crush.”

“Then what would you call it?” Holden considered that for a second. What were these feelings he was having? He didn’t have any illusions about who Amos was. He killed people without remorse. He only had sex with people he didn’t care about, except he’d do Naomi if she let him, and Holden was pretty sure he’d hooked up with Prax Meng at least once. Though, maybe that was him projecting his perception of how two people act when they’re hooking up on him. Amos didn’t seem to follow his rules. He knew he had a dark and complicated sexual history, though he didn’t know the specifics. The more he grasped at the facts he had, the clearer it became that they weren’t many. He didn’t really know much about Amos at all. He liked fighting, fucking, and fixing things. Maybe there wasn’t much else. He wished the mystery of it all wasn’t so enticing. 

“You know what I’d call it?” Miller interrupted, breaking Holden out of his own mind. 

“I’m sure you’ll tell me.” 

“I’d call it real fucking stupid.”

“I don’t disagree.”

“But he has big hands.”

“I wish you wouldn’t read my thoughts.” 

“I am in your thoughts.”

“Then I wish you would stop me from thinking about Amos’s big hands.” 

“Can I ask you a question?”

“No.”

“Is it about what his big hands would do to you, or is it what his big hands imply about his penis?”

“Don’t say ‘penis’ to me.”

“Cock, then.”

“Worse.”

“Surely it’s huge, though, right?” 

“I’m not thinking about it.”

He spent all night thinking about it. 

###  **Amos**

Amos spent the time before he fell asleep thinking about Holden, and not in the normal way he usually thought about Holden before bed. 

Usually, if he thought about Holden before bed, he was picturing him naked on all fours, choking on Alex’s dick and squirming on Amos’s in his ass, usually while Naomi gave orders in a sexy dominatrix costume. If he ever felt bad about the filthy fantasy, which he rarely did, he’d rationalize it by telling himself that Holden would probably be really into that kind of thing. At his core, James Holden was a softie, who never asked for the power or the politics of being the human ambassador to alien life. He never even wanted to be XO of _the Canterbury._ He was constantly forced to be in control, and Amos would bet he’d jump at the chance to give up that control for one night of sexy role reversal, where everyone fucked the captain and he just had to be a good boy and take it. That, and Amos really just wanted to put his dick in Holden. 

But that night, fantasizing about stripping Holden down and fucking him into submission just felt… mean. He knew he was lying awake in the other room, dying to fall asleep, while Miller went on and on in his ear like a yapping dog. He knew he had to do something to help, he just wasn’t all that good at coming up with plans that didn’t involve shooting people. Holden was the plan guy. Maybe Amos owed it to him to try. God, he liked himself better before Holden made him start caring about people. 

✧✧✧

“Morning sunshine,” Amos joked to the back of an unamused Holden’s head. 

“I’ve decided to let you punch me in the face,” Holden deadpanned in response. 

“Do you think that would really work?” 

“No, but it’d be nice to feel something again.” Miraculously, Amos stopped himself from proposing any sexual solutions to that little problem. 

“Nah, your face is too pretty to mess up.” Holden groaned and swatted away the hand Amos held up to caress his jaw facetiously. Amos laughed. “What I don’t get is why you could sleep on _the Roci_ and not here. Is Miller around more here?”

“Didn’t sleep alone on the Roci.” 

“Oh. Is that all?”

“What do you mean, ‘is that all’?”

“You could’ve been getting sleep this entire time if you just slept in the same bed as someone else?” 

“Maybe?”

“Is your masculinity so fragile that you’d rather stay awake for 30 hours a day than have a fucking _slumber party_ with me?”

“I didn’t consider it.”

“You are a dumbass. You’re sleeping in my bed tonight.” 

“It’s not big enough for both of us.” 

“We’ll fucking cuddle, then.” In reality, he’d probably just push the two mattresses together on the floor so they’d have room, but Amos was a little curious as to whether Holden was desperate enough at this point to actually cuddle with him. Turns out he was. 

“You don’t have to do that for me.”

“Shut the fuck up. You just better not snore.”


	2. swim through your veins like a fish in the sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is perhaps the porniest two people not having sex has ever been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title references uncle kracker's song "follow me"

###  **Amos**

Holden was still dead tired the whole day, but he smiled at Amos a little more when their eyes met. If he didn’t know better, Amos might think Holden was looking forward to their little sleepover coming up. It was probably just so he could finally get some sleep. Nothing nefarious about it. 

Amos, on the other hand, was excited to have Holden’s body pressed up against him. Amos wasn’t a cuddler, but he was sure Holden was, and he figured he could deal with that as long as it meant getting to press his cock against that tight little ass. He knew that he probably wouldn’t get to do that. He was confident Holden would be a total prude, citing “the principle of the thing” or some shit. He was satisfied with just the fantasy. 

He was contemplating whether or not he thought Holden had been fucked by a man before when Murtry approached him and Holden. 

“How has nobody shot this guy yet?” Amos muttered, not quite under his breath. 

“I’m still waiting on you to try,” Murtry threatened. Amos rolled his eyes. Murtry went on to talk about something that worried Holden and annoyed Amos, even though he didn’t catch the specifics. He was busy thinking about making Murtry choke on the barrel of his loaded gun and deciding that Holden had probably at least been pegged before, but he preferred to daydream about being the first real cock to split him open. It was a lot to balance. 

“So, what do you think?” he was asked after Murtry left in a huff. It was cute that Holden thought he’d been listening. 

“I think I want to take that guy’s skin off with a very, very, dull knife,” he said with a smile. 

“You’re always so helpful.”

“Happy to be of service.” 

###  **Holden**

If there was one plus side to all the unnecessary conflict and catastrophe that Holden had to deal with, it was that it distracted him from his weird, sexual thoughts about Amos. But, like cockroaches, they never seemed to die. Every crass word from Amos’s mouth went straight to his traitorous dick. 

Doctor Okoye brought yet another concern to his attention about the way the colonial intervention sabotaged her ability to get an untainted biological profile of the planet. He understood, but didn’t know what she thought he could do about it. He gave her a non-committal response that, while it didn’t appear to satisfy her, was enough to make her leave. He didn’t have the energy to feel as shitty about it as he thought he should’ve. 

“She has a thing for you,” Amos pointed out, because he’s an asshole. 

“I know. I’ve been ignoring it.” He felt bad about it, but tip-toeing around a nice girl’s feelings for him did not even make his list of priorities. Under normal circumstances, he hoped he’d be a little more sympathetic. They were on a foreign planet that wanted them dead, or at the very least, didn’t care enough to keep them alive. He had other shit to worry about. That, and the only person he was interested in sex with right now was Amos, and that was just about all of the melodrama he had the capacity to deal with for the next couple of decades. 

“She’s cute.” 

“You should go for it.”

“If she was drooling after _me_ like a lost puppy, I might.” 

“You might recall my girlfriend? Naomi? Whom I love?” 

“She ain’t here, is she?”

“Funny, I’d think of you as the kind of guy who’d break my dick off and feed it to me if I was even thinking about cheating on her.”

“I am. You passed my test.”

“What do I win?” Holden hoped that came off as sarcasm and not a flirtation. He hoped he meant it that way, but he couldn’t trust himself anymore. Amos ignored the question. 

“You’re allowed to fantasize, though, right? I mean, you and I both know Naomi has thought about me naked once or twice.” He wiggled his eyebrows. Holden chose to laugh, praying it was a joke. Though he guessed he was in no position to blame Naomi, be it true. He was still sometimes surprised that Naomi and Amos hadn’t ever hooked up, being that they were so close, and also both so incredibly, magnetically, attractive. He was glad they hadn’t. He doubted his sexual prowess, considerable as it was, could compare side-by-side with Amos’s. 

He wondered if Amos was right, if Naomi wouldn’t consider it a betrayal to fantasize about someone else. He wondered if the answer would be different if he was fantasizing about Elvi instead of Amos. Elvi would probably be worse, right? She was a sweet girl, who probably wanted more than just a roll in the hay. She would get attached, and it would have to mean something, at least to her. Amos would just be sex. Good sex. Rough sex. Mind-blowing, worldview-altering, bed-breaking sex. Amos could give him something Naomi couldn’t. Not better, just different. He didn’t know if that made it less of a betrayal or more. 

It didn’t matter. Maybe fantasizing about Elvi would be worse, but that didn’t make fantasizing about Amos anywhere near okay. Besides, he didn’t want to have sex with Elvi. And he really, really wanted to have sex with Amos. 

“Are you even listening to me? I’m just saying I bet her little hands would make your cock look huge.” Holden was glad he missed the first part of that. He didn’t think he could take hearing it. 

“Luckily, I don’t need any help in that department,” he riffed. He wasn’t bluffing. He’d never received any complaints before, and he was bigger than any of the guys he’d been with, but they were few and a long time ago. He’d probably be small compared to Amos. That should maybe be more humiliating than hot, but it wasn’t. 

“I’ll bet not.” 

“As your captain, I really shouldn’t let you talk to me like that.” 

“You’re pulling rank for the first time now? ‘Cause I implied you have a little dick?” 

“I just think that maybe you shouldn’t be thinking about the size of my penis in any capacity,” Holden justified. He acknowledged the hypocrisy. 

“Sure, but you wouldn’t have said anything if I had been like,” he pitched his voice up a little, “I bet you have the biggest cock on the whole planet.”

“I definitely would’ve said something to that.” Amos ignored him and continued his little comedy routine. 

“I just can’t stop thinking about how fat and juicy your hog is, Jim. Bet it tastes _so_ good.”

“That’s enough of whatever this is.”

“What’re you gonna do about it, _daddy?”_ he teased in the same high pitched voice, wetting his lip and blinking his wide eyes. It was more ridiculous than attractive, which is what he figured Amos was going for. What Amos didn’t know was that it was probably the first thing he’d said in a few days that didn’t turn Holden on. “Are you going to punish me?” 

“It feels like I’m the one being punished here.” 

“Okay, If you’re into that.”

“I’m not.” He was. Apparently. 

“Sure.” 

Amos was onto him, he knew it. He was being teased, and not in the fun way where he gets to finish eventually. He didn’t know how he was going to handle sleeping in the same bed as the man he pined so desperate after. 

###  **Amos**

Holden was acting weird. He’d seen tired and miserable before; this was something else. For what might’ve been the first time, Amos wished he was better at reading people. Normally he didn’t care one way or the other. The way he saw it, if people couldn’t be honest about what they needed, they didn’t deserve to get it. He certainly wasn’t going to go out of his way to solve some puzzle, just to give someone what they knew damn well how to ask for. 

There were very few emotions that Amos understood. He was pretty sure Holden went through more complex feelings in fifteen minutes than Amos had in a whole year. Amos was mostly just either satisfied or dissatisfied. He could also be horny, angry, confused, tired, or… probably just horny again. That was pretty much it, he thought. 

Sometimes, when he had the energy, he sought to understand other people’s emotions. He never got far, but he had some basic understanding of how they worked. The thing he found most confusing wasn’t so much the regular emotions people felt, but the emotions on top of those emotions. There were always layers. Like, Holden could be happy, but then sometimes, he felt bad that he was happy. If he was happy when he felt like he shouldn’t be allowed to be happy, he felt guilty about feeling happy and then he wasn’t happy anymore. It seemed to only work negatively. He was never happy that he was sad or happy that he was happy. He was just sad that he was happy or sad that he was sad. That didn’t seem fair. 

Amos didn’t see the point in being dissatisfied with his own satisfaction. If things were good, he didn’t overanalyze them. If things were bad, he tried to fix them if he could so they would be good again. He thought that was the way things should be. 

Perhaps the unfamiliar emotion Holden was expressing was guilt. Amos didn’t think he’d done anything wrong on Ilus yet, but it seemed that Holden often found ways to feel guilty about things he hadn’t actually done. He probably felt guilty about something he _thought_ about doing but didn’t do. What a bummer way to live. 

When the sun started to set, and Holden was out doing something or another, Amos decided he’d set up the space for them to sleep. Together. The idea of it made him a little giddy. 

He tried not to be seen in the hallway moving the mattress from one room to the other. He didn’t really give a shit if anyone thought they were fucking, but he thought Holden would, and he was trying to be sensitive. 

He put the two mattresses next to each other and covered the seam between them with an unfitted sheet. Then he contemplated whether Holden would be mad if he jerked off in their bed. He decided that he would. Then he did it anyway.

###  **Holden**

As tired as he was, you’d think he’d be dying to get in bed that night. Mostly, he was. But there was a part of him that lingered, dealing with issues that could be put off until the next day without any problem. 

Despite Amos’s earlier accusation, Holden’s masculinity wasn’t fragile. Sharing a bed with another man was a non-issue. Machismo and heterosexuality were ancient Earther constructs that had no home in the infinite expanse of space. People had different sexual and romantic preferences, but you’d have a hard time finding someone in space who steadfastly identified as “straight.” Not that he didn’t know plenty of men who primarily slept with women and plenty of women who primarily slept with men, but no one boasted, or even really talked about, being heterosexual like he’d seen in old Terran texts. It was weird to limit yourself in that way. 

Holden didn’t really have a gender preference when it came to sex. He could spend hours with his tongue between Naomi’s long legs, coaxing beautiful moans from her gorgeous lips. He’d be just as satisfied to be face down, ass up, letting Amos do whatever the fuck he wanted with his fingers, tongue, and cock. Both at the same time might kill him in practice, but the fantasy was earth-shattering. 

Romantically, he gravitated toward women, but he couldn’t pinpoint a particular reason for that. He had never dated a man, but didn’t think that he wouldn’t. He’d also never been on the receiving end of sex with a man, but not for lack of wanting to try it. The only sex he’d had with men had been casual hookups with his peers at the Naval academy and one-night stands with near strangers in his twenties. He’d never trusted someone enough to be his first. He didn’t even have to consider if he trusted Amos like that. He knew Amos wouldn’t hurt him, not purposely. Not in any way he didn’t ask for.

Sharing a bed with a man didn’t bother him. He’d done it before, sexually and platonically. No big deal. It was sharing a bed with Amos that freaked him out. Amos had talked about cuddling earlier. Holden had assumed it was a joke, but he couldn’t say it didn’t excite him in a way he didn’t want to have to confront. Amos’s strong arms imprisoning him in comfortable warmth. Their entire bodies pressed together. Breath against his neck and, if he wiggled just right and got lucky, a big solid cock resting in the crack of his ass. 

Even if Amos wanted to fuck him, and Holden was pretty sure he had no real interest, he’d have to turn him down. He wouldn’t cheat on Naomi. But if he woke up with Amos’s hard-on leaking against the back seam of his sweats? That wouldn’t be his fault, would it? 

He had a problem. 

✧✧✧

It was getting dark, so Holden headed to the commissary to go to sleep in Amos’s room.

“Ready to get some sleep?” Amos asked once Holden dragged his feet like a zombie through the door. 

“You have no idea.”

He just wanted to get ready for bed quickly and in silence, to plop down on the mattress and finally lay his head on a pillow with confidence that Miller wouldn’t suddenly appear. He was grateful to be tired enough to fall right asleep without having to deal with small talk and awkwardness as they laid lovelessly side-by-side like estranged husbands staying together for the kids. 

Amos appeared to have different plans, cat-calling playfully as he undressed. It was humiliating in a way only Amos could make sexy. 

“Fuck.” Amos let out as he watched Holden make quick, prudish work of taking off his underwear. It was a sound that Holden could not decipher. There was no breathiness or vocal fry; Amos delivered the obscenity like a matter of fact. A simple statement: fuck. 

Holden looked up at Amos through his eyelashes– not flirtatious or seductive, just completely naked and vulnerable. The wolf-whistle when he removed his shirt didn’t phase him. The “nice ass!” as he discarded his pants barely made him blush. Something about the honest simplicity of “fuck” made him feel seen like he’d never been looked at before. He peered down at himself, dick hanging limp but not completely disinterested, then quickly scrambled to put on clean boxer briefs and grey sweats. 

“‘Knew you had a tight little body, but shit, you look good naked,” Amos leered. “Naomi’s a lucky girl getting to peg that ass.” There was nothing Holden could think of to say to that that wouldn’t be a verification or denial, and he didn’t think he was ready for Amos to know that there was nothing he liked more than taking Naomi’s long, fat strap. It was an occasional indulgence she allowed him, which made it even hotter. She _let_ him have it, because he was good, or because it was his birthday. She loved doing it too, he knew, but he suspected she liked withholding it from him even more. She knew just how to tease him to drive him crazy. God, he was so in love with her. 

“I’m taking your silence as confirmation, you know.” Holden just grunted, hoping his exhaustion gave him an excuse if Amos pressed it again the next day. Though he didn’t think he’d deny it. “I am absolutely going to jerk off to that mental image, thank you.” 

“Please, not in bed with me.” 

“Oh, you wish.” 

Holden got under the covers, staying as near to the edge of the makeshift bed as humanly possible. Amos noticed. 

“Don’t be such a puritan, Cap,” he said, then got in bed, spreading one arm out just a little. Holden couldn’t tell if the outstretched arm was an invitation, or just a way to claim the bulk of the space, so he didn’t take the bait. The last thing he thought about before falling asleep with the lamp still on was how much he’d like to lay his head on Amos’s chest and let that big arm drape around him. 

###  **Amos**

It was a little earlier than Amos usually liked to get in bed. He was a stay-up-late-drinking, wake-up-late-hungover kind of guy, but he was willing to go to bed early if it meant Holden didn’t go another night without sleep. Look at him, Mr. Sacrifice. How novel. 

Holden looked peaceful in his sleep. Younger. The lines that had appeared on Holden’s face from years of having the weight of several worlds on his shoulders deepened further over the course of the week. The gravity of the new world aged them both. That, and the facial hair. 

Holden’s lips fell slightly open. Amos thought about Cap’s lips a lot. Sometimes, watching them move was the only thing that let him tolerate listening to the guy talk. They were full and pink like they were surgically enhanced, but soft and supple like they weren’t. _Pillowy_ was the word that came to mind. _Like a pillow for my cockhead._

Mostly, Amos thought about letting Holden suck him off. Maybe “letting” wasn’t the word. Making. Amos thought about making Holden suck him off. He liked the sound of that better. He didn’t expect the captain to have much experience navigating a blowjob, but he thought he’d be eager to learn, which was often better, anyway. Amos would pull himself out of his sweats, hard and heavy, and Holden would look up at him like a kid on Christmas. Amos didn’t exactly have a beginner-level dick. It would stretch those pillow-lips thin to even feed him half of it. Training Holden to suck him would be an exercise in patience, but well worth it to get to see him gag on it later. He wondered if Holden would let him fuck his face a little. He wondered if he needed permission. 

Holden would lick and suck at the sensitive tip of it before taking a little too much in his mouth. When he choked, Amos would pet his hair, say some soothing shit like “good boy, baby, go slow. ‘Little bit at a time,” even though he’d want nothing more than to shove it all the way in and deal with the consequences later. 

Would he call Holden ‘baby’? In his fantasies, he typically gravitated toward names like ‘little slut’ and ‘sloppy little fuckdoll,’ you know, sappy shit like that. But he didn’t mind entertaining the idea of a bit of a softer approach. He pictured rubbing a thumb gently over the rim of Holden’s virgin ass. He’d whisper, “such a pretty little hole, baby boy.” Holden would arch his back into the praise and Amos would give that pretty hole a little kiss. 

He would normally picture his domination of Holden as more punishing than praising. Rarely did he even think about the prep that would go into it. He knew, if they were really going to have sex, that he’d take his time with his fingers and tongue working Holden open with plenty of lube. He knew how to make sex good for his partners. Great, even. Mind-blowing. He was considerate and unselfish, and he valued consent about anything else. But when he daydreamed about sex, it was for his eyes only. It was his own damn mind, and if he decided that Holden was just automatically lubed 24/7 so that he could slip inside with little resistance whenever he damn-well pleased, then that was true in the world he designed. He didn’t think that made him a bad guy, and if it did, he wouldn’t change it. 

It occurred to him that he wasn’t thinking about what he _wanted_ to do to Holden, were Holden a magical fantasy sex doll that wanted whatever Amos wanted him to want. He was thinking about what he _would_ do to Holden. The real life Holden that was asleep next to him. He was thinking about what Holden would like, how to make it good for him, how to make him happy, how to make him come. 

Holden stirred in his sleep, pulling Amos from his imagination. Holden’s lips moved, and Amos wanted to kiss them. Amos wanted to kiss Holden. That was new. 

Kissing was never involved in any of his fantasies. Kissing could be hot on occasion, but thinking about kissing was boring and unsatisfying. Why picture kissing someone when you can picture their lips around the base of your cock, the tip pressing against the back of their throat and making them gag? Amos mostly considered kissing as a means to an end. People liked to be kissed during sex and Amos didn’t mind that. It was weird to want to kiss someone. Especially Holden. 

The sleeping body tossed again. Amos thought for a second he might wake up. Instead, he flipped to face his bedfellow and moved closer. Amos was getting tired now, too. He turned the lamp off, and felt disappointed he didn’t get to look at Holden anymore. He left his arm outstretched a little, hoping that sleeping Holden would accept the invitation that wakeful Holden rejected. Sure enough, the next time Holden moved in his sleep, his head landed right on Amos’s bicep. Amos maneuvered them gently so that his arm could fall around Holden comfortably, and he quickly fell asleep. 


	3. wake up call caught you in the morning with a boner against my leg

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title reference's maroon 5's song "wake up call"

###  **Holden**

Holden woke up in Amos’s arms. That was a lot to take in. He wished he was uncomfortable with it. That would be the right thing to feel right now. Instead, he was more comfortable than he’d been in a long time. He liked the weight of Amos’s big body against him, the smell of him and the idea of being fully enveloped. 

He’d expected a hard-on pressing at his ass, but Amos’s erection tented his boxers toward the ceiling. He was on his back, with his arm out to be used as a pillow. Holden was facing Amos. His face was pressed to Amos’s pectoral muscle, and his body clung to the big man’s entire side. That meant that _Holden’s_ dick was pressing against Amos. That was a problem. 

The correct thing to do would be to get out of bed before Amos woke up and felt how hard he was. He could avoid the humiliation easily. His body clock told him he was fully rested. He should make a cup of coffee, call Naomi and Alex to check in, and do some work before Amos got up and inevitably teased him about something other than waking up in his arms with a boner. The thing was, Holden didn’t want to leave Amos’s embrace. He was pretty sure he could just forget all of his problems and live in this moment forever. As long as Amos didn’t wake up and start running his mouth to ruin it. 

He was disappointed that his weird new Amos-fetish wasn’t just a product of his exhaustion. Holden was well-rested and his conscience was clear. He still wanted to wake Amos up with a sloppy morning blowjob. He wondered if Amos would be okay with that. He was pretty sure it wouldn’t be a problem. 

He decided that, if he went back to sleep, he could mitigate the awkwardness by pretending to wake up when Amos did. He flipped onto his other side so that his morning wood wouldn’t be pressed against the sleeping man’s body, and tried not to think about how much thought and effort he put in to be allowed to continue being held by Amos. 

Holden was settling under Amos’s arm and working out how he might pretend to wake up at the same time as Amos when the familiar “mornin’ Cap” startled him fully awake. He paused for a second, then quickly scrambled out of the bed. 

“What’s the rush?” asked Amos with fatigue and sarcasm in his voice. “Come cuddle, baby.”

“Pass.” He didn’t remark on being called ‘baby.’ He didn’t trust his own ability to pretend he didn’t like it. 

“Yeah, then why didn’t you rush out of bed when you first woke up instead of waiting until I did?” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Had he been awake for that? If so, he knew about Holden’s morning wood. 

“You want me to take care of that hard-on for you?” _Great._

“No, thank you,” he deadpanned. The sarcastic armor he’d been keeping up was faltering.

“Come on, we both know you can’t jerk off, and I’m an excellent cocksucker.” The proposition lingered, heavy in the air. It wasn’t Amos’s usual sexually-charged banter. There was a softness to it, delivered with wide eyes and a touch of what Holden might’ve called insecurity if he believed Amos was capable of being insecure. Unless Holden was reading him terribly wrong, Amos wasn’t making fun of him this time. Amos was making a genuine offer. It made him wonder if he’d actually been teasing the whole time, or if he’d really been interested in hooking up. He decided, for his own sanity, there was no way that was true. Holden knew his only route here was playing it off like a joke. 

“I’m sure you are.” It did not come out as a joke as much as an admission. He was going for ‘this conversation is over now,’ but somehow landed on ‘I have thought about your lips around my dick and I think it would be good.’ Easy mistake. 

“Let me take care of you,” Amos whispered like a prayer. It was not the kind of thing Amos said. If he’d said something more like, ‘let me jerk that pretty cock ‘til you spill for me,’ or whatever creative string of obscenities his filthy mind could come up with, Holden could handle that. Holden knew what to do with that. He’d flip Amos off and leave, and that would be the end of it until he tried something else later. He didn’t know how to deal with ‘let me take care of you.’ ‘Let me take care of you’ short-circuited his brain. 

_Please_ was the answer his mind supplied. It wasn’t the right answer, but it was the answer he wanted to give. He wanted to beg Amos to make him come, and blame it on not getting to jerk off without being watched by an alien. It was a stupid excuse. Holden had gone more time than they’d been on Ilus without jerking off or having sex before. It wasn’t something he was particularly desperate for in normal circumstances. He loved sex, he and Naomi had a whole lot of it when they had the chance, but there were long stretches of time when it couldn’t be the priority. That was his life, and it never drove him this crazy. Of course, when Holden had to go a little while without release, Naomi wasn’t constantly in his ear telling him how sweet his ass is and how bad she wanted to force him down on her cock. That had to be the difference. 

“I can’t,” is what Holden finally said, and it was the wrong thing. It wasn’t a yes, which was good, but it was still a confession. It was an I-want-to-but-no. It was an I-would-if-I-could. It was a yes-this-boner-is-for-you-but-I-have-to-pretend-it-isn’t-because-I-have-a-girlfriend-I-hope-you-understand. 

“Right, yeah.” Amos looked down, and then his face shifted to his normal smirking self. Good. “Let me know if that changes.” 

“It won’t.”

###  **Amos**

“It won’t,” Holden insisted, and then disappeared into the other room, presumably to call Naomi and tell her all about what had happened. Always with his stupid candor thing. 

He wondered if Holden was desperate enough at this point to jerk off despite Miller. Or maybe he and Naomi would have phone sex. He would like to hear that. 

Propositioning Holden was a mistake. Amos wasn’t really good at strategic planning. He just kind of did things. He supposed navigating this new thing with Holden might require a little more finesse, but he didn’t know if he had it in him. Besides, he was pretty sure he had ruined everything already.

The cards were on the table as much as they’d ever be. Amos knew Holden wanted to have sex and Holden knew Amos wanted to have sex. Holden would never let that happen as long as he was with Naomi, and he and Naomi were pretty much the most solid thing Amos had ever witnessed.

He didn’t want Naomi and Holden to fight, and he definitely didn’t want them to break up. He also hadn’t lied when he said he’d hurt Holden if he ever hurt Naomi. She didn’t deserve that. He stared at the ceiling, his erection waning but not fully going away, thinking about what it was that he actually did want. 

He wanted Holden to be single, but to still be with Naomi. He wanted to have sex with Holden, who was in a relationship with Naomi, but he didn’t want Holden to cheat on Naomi. He wanted to have a threesome with Holden and Naomi, but Naomi was on the Rocinante in orbit, and probably didn’t want that anyway. None of the things that he wanted were possible. That sucked. 

Instead of spending his time worrying about the real life consequences of sex with Holden, he settled for the fantasy of it. It was more fun that way, anyway. He didn’t have to worry about pesky things like emotions and gag-reflexes.

Usually Amos didn’t get completely naked to jerk off, but there was an increased possibility that Holden could walk in at any time, and he wanted to put on a good show if that happened. He stripped off his undershirt and boxers, and made a point to lay himself back down on Holden’s side of the bed. The idea of Holden seeing him like this was enough to get him back to hardness in no time. 

He stroked himself leisurely, knowing he was worked up enough to finish fast but not wanting to rush it. He spit in his hand, thinking about Holden’s wet mouth wrapped around the tip. He closed his eyes while he worked himself and pictured what his perfect threesome with Naomi and Holden would look like. 

He had no doubt that Holden would be in the middle, on his hands and knees like a wanton dog. Amos would be nice and sit back, letting the captain take his time working his mouth around his big cock, instead of shoving in and making him take it. He pictured Naomi would not be as nice with her strap-on. She’d shove in rough and make him take it to the hilt, and he’d be grateful for it. Amos wondered if Naomi prepped him with her fingers, or sat back and watched while he did it himself. Amos would want to be the one who got to prep him, taking his teasing time with his tongue and his fat fingers. One of his fingers would probably feel like two of Naomi’s sinking into Holden’s tight hole. He’d see if he could fit one inside with just his spit slicking the way. Holden would moan, and Amos wouldn’t care much if it was in pain or pleasure. It would probably be both. 

Holden would eat Naomi out while Amos stretched him, and he’d be good at it. There was no way that perfect mouth didn’t work wonders between somebody’s legs. He’d lick and suck her clit like a man dying of thirst while he worked fingers inside her. He’d know just how to make her finish quick or draw it out with teasing licks until she fell apart on his tongue. Maybe one and then the other. 

Amos slicked a finger in his mouth and let it fall below his balls. It had been a while since he played with his asshole. He liked it plenty, but it required a little more work than he was willing to put in most days, and jerking off was satisfying enough. But now he couldn’t help himself, rubbing a slick finger at his rim and thinking about Holden’s tongue tasting him. He wasn’t sure that Holden would like doing that, but he had an inkling that he’d do it anyway if Amos told him to. If he had more of a conscience, he might think that was a bad thought to have, but he didn’t, so it was incredibly hot. Holden would do anything he asked, because he was a good little pet who was eager to please. 

When Holden was almost-adequately lubed and stretched, and Naomi had come at least once, they’d flip their little toy around like a ragdoll and shove inside with abandon. Holden would rock between them, taking two big, brutal cocks and loving every second of it. (Amos had discarded the idea that he’d be gentle. It was his fantasy and he wanted to fuck Holden’s face.) 

He was just about ready to finish, one practiced hand moving fluidly up and down his dick and one finger ghosting over his hole, when Holden walked through the door and expedited the process. 

“Sorry,” Amos offered half-heartedly, his dick still drooling over his abs. In his defense, Amos really thought that the phone call would take longer. Or maybe time just flies when you’re having fun.

“Gross,” Holden said, even though Amos could tell he didn’t mean it. If he was actually so disturbed, he probably would’ve looked away. Instead, his eyes lingered on Amos’s naked body when he said “just clean up and get dressed. We have work to do. I’m not sleeping in your fucking jizz.” 

###  **Meanwhile, Holden**

“It won’t,” Holden insisted, and then went into the other room to call Naomi and tell her all about what had happened.

He requested a connection to the Rocinante on his hand terminal. Alex’s cheerful and genuine “Howdy, captain!” was almost enough to kill his erection. It was a mean, inappropriate thing to think, but Holden was too sexually frustrated for kindness. 

“Hey, man, how are things?” Holden asked, figuring it would be rude to just pretend Alex wasn’t a person and ask for Naomi right away, even though he may as well not be. God, had all this time alone with Amos made him a douchebag? Alex drawled a metaphor about being happier than some animal in some situation where that animal would be happy. Holden politely replied, and asked to be transferred to a private channel with Naomi. 

“Nothing to worry about, I hope,” Alex answered like a question. 

“Nope, just want to speak privately with my girlfriend.” He hoped that didn’t say more than he wanted it to. 

“‘Hear you loud and clear, hoss,” Alex blushed. Well. Discretion had never been Holden’s strong suit. 

###  **Naomi**

“Phone’s for you, Naomi,” Alex said sheepishly over the comm. “It’s, uh, your boyfriend.” That was weird. Alex had never referred to Holden like that. She accepted the transfer. 

“Jim,” uttered Naomi by way of greeting, “what could you possibly have told Alex that made him so weird about transferring this call to me?” 

“What? I just said I wanted to speak privately with my girlfriend.” That explained it. 

“Why would you say it like that? He must think we’re having phone sex.” 

“I didn’t mean to– Wait, is that an option?” Naomi very briefly considered it. She was working in the engineering room. It wasn’t the time, but she’d file the idea away for later. 

“Not anymore, it’s not,” Naomi teased. 

“I have to tell you something,” Jim said. That was weird. Usually Jim was a little more blunt. That, plus the secrecy, and referring to her as “my girlfriend” to Alex, added up to something she didn’t think she liked. 

“Boyfriend to girlfriend or captain to XO?” She knew the answer, but hoped she was wrong. If it was an Ilus problem or a Roci problem, he probably would’ve told Alex with her. If there was a problem, it was a Holden and Naomi problem. 

“Boyfriend to girlfriend.”

“While the entire fucking planet is in danger?”

“Yeah, I guess?” 

“Scary.” 

“More humiliating, honestly. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.” Naomi didn’t know what that meant. 

“Come on then,” Noami urged. Holden let out a breath and then started. 

“So, I haven’t really been sleeping on Ilus. Like at all.” He explained that Miller wouldn’t leave him alone long enough to let him sleep through the night. She furrowed her eyebrows in worry, until he said, “it wasn’t a problem on the Roci because I never slept alone.” That gave her pause. 

“James Holden, if you are about to tell me that you cheated on me because your alien-slash-ghost imaginary friend made you do it, I’m gonna– I don’t even know what I’m going to do. Frankly, it’s unprecedented.” Her mind was reeling. Naomi never thought the day would come when Holden had to confess infidelity to her. Honestly, she considered herself about four hundred times more likely to cheat than Jim, even though she would never be unfaithful either. 

The captain had a weird thing about monogamy that often baffled Naomi. Monogamy wasn’t rare in the belt, but Belters tended to be a lot more practicality-oriented than Inners, and monogamy, at least without children, wasn’t exceptionally practical. Belters often lived in a state of flux– changing jobs, changing planets, changing governments– it made sense for individuals to change partners with a little more frequency. That, and people often had a lot bigger things to worry about than interpersonal relationship drama. Her friends on Tycho had even teased her, calling her ‘Mrs. James Holden’ like it was a cutting insult. Going with the same guy for such a long time was weird for a woman as young and hot as _the_ Naomi Nagata. 

But fidelity was important to Holden, so it was important to her. He was more to her than any man had ever been. She didn’t need hook-ups to supplement that. But to learn that Jim might? It was more shocking than painful. 

“What? No! I didn’t cheat on you. I wouldn’t,” he paused, “I wouldn’t cheat on you. Amos just–” 

“Wait, it was Amos? You had sex with Amos?” That probably shouldn’t be as much of a surprise as it was. She knew what Jim liked in bed, and Amos checked a lot of boxes. He would be rough and punishing in a way she knew would drive her boyfriend crazy. It might be good for Jim. Was she considering letting Amos fuck her man? She didn’t know how to feel about that. It was definitely different. She didn’t think she minded the idea. 

“I didn’t have sex with Amos. We just, like, cuddled?” _Wait, what?_ Naomi burst out laughing. Holden blushed, letting her laugh and laugh until she sighed and looked into the terminal again. Amos and Holden platonically snuggling was the funniest thing she could imagine. Jim called to confess about that? She was glad he did, stupid as it was. She now had the cutest mental image in the entire world to think about every time something got bad. Maybe they could recreate it and get a picture. She was just about ready to make it her Christmas card. 

“Jim, you are the cutest thing in the entire world. I don’t think I tell you that enough. You are so fucking precious.” 

“Thanks,” he deadpanned, which was also precious. 

“I don’t even know why you’re telling me this. Did you call so I could make fun of you? Is this about your little humiliation fetish? You want me to laugh at you?” 

“I do not have a– fine, maybe I do. But it’s not that. I just thought you should know. I guess… It wasn’t _just_ cuddling.” She didn’t care. It was Amos. She thought maybe she should care, but couldn’t bring herself to. If Jim wanted to have sex with Amos, she really didn’t have a problem with it. 

“Did you take a bubble bath together, too?” 

“I’m serious. He hasn’t exactly been… appropriate.” 

“Amos? Inappropriate? That’s news to you?”

“No.” His voice got quiet and unsure as he continued, “it just usually doesn’t turn me on this much?” Naomi nodded in understanding. 

“So you called to ask my permission to have sex with Amos.” _Yes._ The answer was yes, he had her permission. She couldn’t say why the answer was yes, or what it meant that the answer was so easily yes, but yes. 

“What? No.” He looked shocked, like he hadn’t even considered it. “I called to confess my sin of thinking about it. And maybe to get your advice, if you’re not too mad to give it. I could really use it.” Mad? Even if she did mind if he and Amos hooked up, Holden hadn’t given him a reason to be mad. She didn’t tell him about every person she fantasized about hooking up with. And the cuddling thing was a non-issue. What kind of vile person would she be if she’d rather Jim suffered sleeplessly for weeks than sleep in the same bed as someone else? Plus, again, the image of the two of them sleeping all tangled up together was her favorite thing in the whole universe. 

“How long have you been thinking about it?” she asked. 

“Two or three days, why?” 

“Just making sure you haven’t been harboring these feelings for years and have just decided to tell me about it at the worst time possible.”

“No. I feel like shit for waiting even this long.” She felt bad about that. “I just kind of thought it would go away when I got some sleep.”

“But it didn’t.” 

“Nope. I still think there’s a possibility it might go away if I ever get the chance to… have some alone time. But I’m not desperate enough to let the protomolecule watch me jerk off. Not yet anyway.”

“I don’t know what to do with that, Jim,” she laughed. 

“Sorry.” His blush was cute, but he looked miserable. 

“Jim, I need you to know you have nothing to feel sorry about. I’m glad you told me ‘cause it’s obviously getting you down, but you don’t have to tell me every time you have a fantasy about someone else.” Jim nodded, but didn’t say anything, so she went on. “I’m in this for the long haul with you. Forever and ever and ever.”

“Me too,” he interrupted, as if it didn’t go without saying. 

“Yeah. Forever is a long time only ever fantasizing about one person. You’re allowed to want more sometimes.”

“More? There is no more. You’re everything.”

“That’s sweet. But there is more. For starters, I’m never going to be able to fuck you like I don’t care about you more than anything.” 

“I don’t need–” 

“It’s not about need. It’s about want. You’re allowed to have what you want. You want Amos.” 

“You’re… are you giving me _permission_ to fuck Amos? You know that’s not what I called for, right?”

“Yeah, I know. You called for advice, and I’m giving it to you.”

“And your advice is to fuck Amos. Amos, who is, A, not you, and B, Amos.” It was a nonsense sentence that should only make sense to him, but she understood it. 

“My advice is to stop beating yourself up about it. I don’t mind if you fantasize about other people, and I don’t mind if you fuck Amos.” 

“Why not?” 

“I don’t know. Being jealous of you fucking _Amos_ kind of feels like if you were jealous of me fucking my vibrator.”

“Are you kidding? I am _very_ jealous of your vibrator. _It_ gets to be inside you, while I’m stuck on this stupid planet thinking about settling for Amos.” Naomi laughed and shook her head. 

“You are way too horny to be functional right now.” 

“Tell me about it.”

“I just know how Amos thinks, you know?”

“No, I don’t. I will never figure out what the fuck is going on in his head.” 

“I understand it as well as it can be understood, I guess. Sex, for him, is like, I don’t know, going to the casino.” 

“High risk, high reward?” Jim joked. She laughed. 

“Just a fun thing to do with your friends.” 

“That’s an insane way to think about sex, but I think you might be right.” 

“I am. It’s like, you could tell me that you and Amos hung out and, I don’t know, tossed a ball around or whatever shit Earthers get up to, and I’d feel just as justified getting jealous as if Amos put his dick in you.” 

“Wow.” 

“I mean, unless you think _you_ might fall in love with him? In which case you should never, ever, have sex with Amos. In fact I forbid it, for your own sake.” 

“No. There is less than zero chance of that, I promise.”

“I figured. I trust you a whole lot.” Holden smiled, and it was her favorite thing to see. He didn’t do it enough. 

“I don’t know how to say this next thing without sounding like an asshole.” _Well that’s not threatening at all._

“More confessions?”

“No. Just… you letting me have sex with Amos doesn’t mean I have to let you have sex with whoever you want, right? I can be open-minded, but I just want to make sure I’m not giving you blanket permission to go have sex with Alex right now.” 

“Alex? Really?”

“Maybe not Alex. But I don’t know if I’m ready for a completely open relationship.” 

“I know. I’m not asking that from you.”

“It’d be shitty for me to go have sex with Amos and then say you’re not allowed to have sex with somebody else, though. I don’t want to say that. You’re allowed to have what you want, too.” Naomi considered that. Jim was right, but it was a little more complicated than that, she thought. Amos was a whole different ballpark, and there was never going to be someone like him. There wasn’t a way to make this exactly even, and she didn’t think it needed to be. But Jim would beat himself up about it if it wasn’t fair, so he needed to believe it was.

“How about, if I want to have sex with somebody else, I will talk to you about it, and you have to have a good reason to say no.” 

“That sounds fair.”

“Let me be clear, ‘I want you all to myself’ isn’t a good reason to say no.” 

“I know. Do you have someone in mind already?” 

“Maybe,” she teased. Of course she did. 

“Who?” 

“Camina Drummer.” Jim was quiet for a second, and she smirked. 

“Do you have feelings for her?” he asked, because he’s Jim Holden and of course that’s the question he would have. 

“Purely sexual ones.” 

“Yeah, like what?” his smile was predatory, but in a playful way. 

“You need to get laid.”

“Thank you, captain obvious. Okay. You can have sex with Camina Drummer as long as I’m allowed to fantasize about how hot that is.” 

“How dare you fetishize me,” she joked. 

“Would it help if I said that it’s not because you’re both women, it’s just because you’re both unbelievably sexy?” 

“I’ll allow it. Do I get to think about Amos fucking you while I play with my vibrator tonight?”

“Do I get to think about you playing with your vibrator while Amos fucks me tonight? _If_ that happens?” Naomi wondered whether the ‘if’ addendum was for her sake or his own, but didn’t question it. 

“That assumes you’ll have the mental capacity to be thinking about anything at all.”

“You’re right,” he said, “and yes, you can always fantasize about me however you want to.”

“Good. I always do.” 

“I love you more than anything in the whole world.” 

“Love you too, Jim. Take notes, because I’m going to want details.”

“Kinky.” 

“Talk to you later.” 

They hung up. 

She wouldn’t say it to Jim, but this might actually have been the best thing that ever happened to their relationship. Maybe she’d send Drummer a text. After she had a little fun with her vibrator. 

###  **Holden**

Amos was coming when he walked through the door. 

His “sorry” didn’t mean much with his dick still drooling over his abs. He’d never seen Amos completely naked, and it was a lot to take in. It didn’t help that his spread legs offered a peek into a place he’d never even considered he’d be allowed to see. Amos was playing with his asshole. That opened doors for Holden. He didn’t think he’d want to top Amos, but now it seemed enticing. Everything about the gorgeously naked body sprawled out on the bed they shared was enticing to Holden. And he was allowed to have it. 

He could see if the offer was still open. Get his dick sucked. Naomi gave him the OK.

Holden wanted to say “don’t be sorry.” He wanted to say “you look so fucking good like that.” He wanted to rip his own clothes off and let Amos do whatever dirty thing he knew he’d been fantasizing about doing. But something held him back, and he didn’t know what it was. 

“Gross,” Holden said instead, “just clean up and get dressed. We have work to do. I’m not sleeping in your fucking jizz.”


	4. of jizz and emotions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> drunk picnic? drunk picnic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They briefly talk about some things in Amos's past, so warning for references to prostitution.

###  **Holden**

Ilus was a pressure cooker, and it was either off or on. Every day went one of two ways. Either everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong at the same time, or Holden had nothing to do at all. He had to deal with a couple of petty disputes that he didn’t consider even close to what was in his job description, but the habitants of Ilus must’ve heard “mediator” and taken it as “guy who solves any problem we can think of.” There was a couple fighting that asked for his advice, and didn’t relent when he insisted it wasn’t his area of expertise, so he talked them through it. James Holden, the marriage counselor. He hated this stupid assignment.

Holden understood that he should be grateful for the boring days. He was, to an extent. Nobody was killing each other or being killed by Ilus. That was a win in itself. But a problemless day meant he had lots of time to worry about what the next problem might be, and feel shitty about being useless to stop it. Holden was jealous that Amos didn’t think that way. Holden caught glimpses of Amos all day, content to sit alone or to chat up a security guard. 

He felt no jealousy about what appeared to be a budding affair between Amos and the woman, whose name he’d have to find out, but he was jealous of Amos’s apparent ability to move on so quickly. He had rejected Amos’s advances just that morning, and the man was already onto somebody else. He didn’t know when or why he’d convinced himself that Amos wanted Holden specifically, and not just sex with whomever was willing. His swift rebound made perfect sense when Holden considered he wasn’t shooting for any one particular basket in the first place. 

While Amos apparently philandered his way around the settlement, Holden hid behind a structure and let Miller appear. 

“Hey, kid.” 

“Hey.” 

“So, you got Naomi’s permission. You can fuck Amos all you want. What’s stopping you?”

“Remind me again why it’s your business? Don’t you have some urgent business you need me to take care of?” 

“I’m still figuring some things out, but I’ll let you know. Since when are you eager to help me out?”

“I want to figure out this protomolecule shit as much as you do. I want to get off of this planet and have sex with my girlfriend.”

“And save humanity, right?”

“Sure.”

“Humans and their desperation for sex. I’ll never understand it.” 

“I’m pretty sure I used to care about other stuff. Amos is messing with my head.” 

“You should let him fuck you.”

“That your professional opinion?”

“You obviously need to get your mind off of sex. You’re useless to me like this. Just a horny bag of testicles.” It was a crass way to say it, but Miller was right. He hadn’t been himself in days, between the exhaustion and the unrelenting lust. His priorities and values were getting lost in the haze of his own arousal. He wasn’t this guy. 

“So that’s my official assignment? Let Amos fuck me?”

“If that’s what it needs to be. We have work to do, and I need you sharp for it.” 

“I will take it into consideration.”

“What’s with the hesitation, anyway? Don’t you want it? I’m in your head and even I can’t figure it out.”

“That’s ‘cause even I don’t know. It’s a sticky situation.”

“Could be a lot stickier.”

“Funny.” It wasn’t. “I don’t know. He’s... Amos.”

“Yeah. Amos, who you’ve been craving for days now, who you’ve been attracted to for a long time. Amos, who is everything you’re looking for in a lay right now.”

“Amos, who could break me with his bare hands.”

“Yeah. Isn’t that what you want?”

“In theory.”

“James Holden. Are you afraid that Amos is going to hurt you?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“Do you know the last time I had sex with someone I didn’t at least _think_ I was in love with?” 

“No, which means you don’t either.”

“Exactly.”

“So you don’t want to have sex with Amos because you’re not in love with him?”

“No.”

“You think you’ll fall in love with him.” 

“It would be insane to think that.”

“But you do.”

“I’m worried about it. I don’t think it’ll happen. But I’m worried about it.”

“You worry about everything.”

“Nice to meet you, I’m James Holden.” 

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Wow,” he snarked, “all of my anxieties are suddenly gone. Thank you, ghost hallucination.” 

“Here’s what’s going to happen.”

“You can see the future now?”

“Shut up. Here’s what I know. You are going to have sex with Amos. You’re either gonna put it off for a little while and then have sex with Amos, or you’re going to have sex with Amos tonight, and be a lot happier. Either way, Amos is going to be inside you, and you’re going to love it. Maybe, for a little while, you might feel like you’re in love with Amos. That’s because you’re a tiny little flesh bag full of jizz and emotions, and you don’t know the difference between the two things. You might be conflicted about that for a little while, but you’re going to file that away, because there are a million other problems on this planet, and every single one of them is _at least_ four hundred times the size of this one. And then, if you make it out of this alive, you’re going to get back on your ship, and look your girlfriend in the eyes, and think, ‘oh, yeah, _this_ is what love is,’ and you’re never going to even entertain the notion that you’re in love with Amos ever again.”

“And then what?”

“Then, I don’t know. It’s optimistic of you to be thinking that far in the future. You are in a whole lot of danger, and Amos’s cock ripping you open should be the last of your worries.” 

“You talking dirty makes me feel very gross.”

“You are very gross. You are a gooey pile of organic matter that only thinks about kinky, recreational sex. Everything about you is disgusting on a visceral level.” 

“And here I kind of thought you had a crush on me,” he joked. 

“I am not capable of that. The only thing I feel for you is fear you’ll mess everything up.” 

“I will do my best not to.”

“Have sex with Amos and we might have a shot.”

“We’ll see. One more question--” 

Miller evaporated when Holden heard a commotion coming from near the commissary. He headed that way, then sped up when he heard Murtry’s grating voice call his name. 

“Holden! You better get this fucking dog on a leash,” he gestured to Amos, “I will not hesitate to put him down.” Amos growled. 

“He’s not a dog,” Holden insisted to Murtry. Then, to Amos: _“dogs_ don’t know better.” Amos’s wink made his head spin a little, but Holden stood his ground. “What did you do?” Amos shrugged. 

“I think he broke my nose,” accused Amos’s victim, an angry RCE employee, with the nasally voice of a man who had a newly broken nose. Holden rested his forehead in his palm for a moment in frustration. 

“He started it,” argued Amos casually. 

“You acted in self defense?” Holden doubted it. 

“Not technically,” Amos admitted, while Murtry barked out a definitive “no.” 

“Then why’d you punch him?”

“He was bein’ an asshole.” Holden sighed, his eyelids pressing together tightly in frustration. 

“Amos is sorry,” Holden said to the man with the broken nose. 

“Am not,” Amos asserted, and Holden glared at him. “Okay, I’m sorry.” 

“I’ll deal with this, Murtry.”

“You better.” 

“C’mon, buddy. You and me are going for a little walk.”

“You know I’m not really your dog, right?” Amos asked as they walked away from Murtry. When they were out of his range of hearing, Holden answered: 

“Guess I won’t make you walk on all fours, then.”

“No way that you’re that kinky.” Maybe not _that_ kinky, but he was a little offended that Amos always insisted he was Mr. Vanilla. 

“I’m not a shrinking violet, you know.” 

“Yeah? We’ll see.” A proposition. 

“Oh, we’ll see?” A rejection. 

“Yeah.” A challenge. 

“Okay, we’ll see.” A promise.

Holden stopped quickly in his room and packed a little bag before they set out on their journey. They walked in silence for a little bit while Holden grasped for something to say to fill the space. He should reprimand Amos for punching someone who didn’t deserve it. He didn’t think he had the energy. Instead, he complained. 

“I hate this planet. I hate this assignment,” Holden pouted. He didn’t usually like to complain to Amos or Alex. It was unprofessional. Perhaps it was ironic that he gave a shit about professionalism after all that had happened, but he still liked to keep a brave face on for his team. Ilus had worn him down. Amos just nodded and said nothing, but it wasn’t like talking to a brick wall. For a long time, Holden had thought it was, and didn’t see that much value in trying to make conversation. But Amos was smart, and a lot more thoughtful than anyone gave him credit for. The way he processed information was unlike anyone he’d ever met before, but not wrong. Just different. Amos didn’t respond much, but he listened better than anyone. Holden thought maybe he could learn from him. “Most of the shit we have to deal with would go away in a second if everyone just had a little bit of common sense.” 

“I don't know about that, Cap.” 

“No?”

“I think your common sense ain’t the same as everybody else’s common sense.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Nothing bad. Just, Belter common sense ain’t the same as Inner common sense, and scientist common sense ain’t the same as colonist common sense, and money common sense ain’t the same as poor common sense.” 

“That’s really wise.” How dare Amos turn out to be thoughtful. That wasn’t helping Holden’s cause. 

“Don’t sound so surprised.” 

“You’re right. Sorry. But don’t you at least think everyone could just stop fighting over petty shit? Work together to survive this? Couldn’t we at least do that?” 

“I know if someone blew up the Roci on its way down like they did with the RCE shuttle? Killed Alex or Naomi? Or _you_?” Holden didn’t know what to make of the emphasis there. “No one would live to be forgiven for it.” Holden sat with that for a second. He wished he didn’t agree. He wanted to be the neutral mediator guy who would keep his head on straight and do the right thing even if his friends were in the balance. He wasn’t that guy. 

“So you think Murtry’s right for wanting to punish the colonists for the shuttle crash?” Amos’s face scrunched up at that. 

“No. Just don’t think common sense is what he’s lacking, is all. Maybe some fucking cojones.” 

“If Murtry had any more balls, we’d all be dead.” 

“Doesn’t take balls to kill people. Takes balls to save people.” Holden stopped in his tracks for the first time to think through that. Amos stopped with him, looking confused. 

“Where’d you learn that from?”

“You.” He said, like it was nothing. Like it wasn’t the sweetest fucking thing in the world. Like it didn’t make his heart sink like a rock into the pit of his stomach. 

“That’s. Wow.” It was a pathetic non-answer, but it was all Holden could offer. 

“Don’t get a big head about it,” Amos dismissed, and then kept walking. 

“Huh,” said Holden to no one, and then caught up with him. 

###  **Amos**

Amos didn’t know if Holden was taking him anywhere in particular, or if they were just walking to get away from it all, but he didn’t mind. He’d grown to appreciate Holden’s company for more than just his pretty lips and nice ass. 

“Why’d you punch that guy, anyway?” Holden asked. 

“Told you. He was getting on my nerves.” If he were being honest, it was a little bit more than that. He was frustrated and bored. The guy just got in the way. 

“Can you please not punch people just because they get on your nerves?” Did Holden know him at all? 

“You know I can’t promise that.” 

“You’ve never punched me. I get on your nerves all the time.” 

“Would you like me to punch you when you get on my nerves?”

“No, but you’re obviously capable of controlling yourself.”

“‘Takes a lot of my energy.” 

“Yeah? How do you keep yourself from punching me, if it’s so hard?” Holden shouldn’t have asked that. He had to know he wouldn’t like the answer. But Amos was kind of dying to see how he’d react to it, so he teased a little. 

“You’re not gonna like it.” 

“Try me.” _Well, he asked for it._

“Well, usually, when you’re running your mouth, I’m fantasizing about skull-fucking you until you cry.” Holden let out a disbelieving laugh. He didn’t seem angry. He should probably seem more angry. He just kept walking, so Amos kept walking with him. 

“Yeah?” Holden licked his lips. Honest-to-God, he licked his fucking lips. “And in your little fantasy, do I like that?” That was a weird question. Amos had never considered it.

“It’s not about _you_ liking it.” Holden seemed weirdly content with that. 

“Do you like it when your partners cry on your cock?” 

“What’s happening here?” 

“I don’t know. Guy talk.” 

“I may not have a lot of friends, but I’m pretty sure this ain’t how ‘guy talk’ goes.” 

“This morning you offered to suck my dick. You _just now_ told me you regularly think about fucking my face. I think we’re past how normal male friendships go.” 

“I guess that’s fair. Still weird as shit, though.” 

“Yeah, definitely.”

“I don’t mind it.” 

###  **Holden**

There was no conventional beauty in the barren landscapes of Ilus. There was no greenery, no flora or fauna like he was used to on the massive acreage his parents still called home. He never longed for Earth as much in space as he did on this piss-poor knockoff of a planet. Calling it ‘New Terra’ was a cruel irony that no one on Earth could ever understand. It would be like calling Cleveland, ‘New Paris.’ 

Where the crust of Ilus’s surface wasn’t rock hard, the dusty dirt that made up the ground almost resembled sand. When Holden decided they were far away enough from the goings on of the settlement, way too far to see or hear any colonist or colonizer, he chose a patch of the sandy floor and took off his backpack. 

“Did you bring me out here to kill me or suck my dick?” Amos asked as Holden unzipped the bag. 

“Those are the only options?” 

“I guess I could suck _you_ off, but any ass play is gonna get real complicated real quick with all this dusty sand shit.” 

“You ever have sex on a beach?” 

“You kidding? You have sex on the beach in Baltimore, you’re the luckiest fucker in the world if you walk away with the nastiest rash of your life and nothing worse. That’s if you don’t get shot and mugged.” 

Holden laid out the blanket he packed. Amos looked at him like he was confused.

“A picnic. Kind of. I have meal replacement bars and booze.”

“I’ve never been on a picnic.”

“No?” 

“‘Less you count putting a blanket down on the street corner so you don’t cut your knees on concrete and broken glass while a guy feeds you his load.” That was more than Amos had ever told Holden about his past. Holden had known, from what he put together from overheard conversations and vague references, but Amos never told him. Amos didn’t look sad about it, so Holden didn’t make it sad. “Not a lot of parks or beaches in my past, Cap. Sorry to disappoint.”

They sat down on the blanket, closer together than they normally would, but not pressing against each other like Holden wanted. It was late for lunch but early for dinner, either three or four in the afternoon, and also neither. Holden took a sip from the bottle of nasty booze that he paid way too much for, because it was five o’clock somewhere, and also here, and also no where. He handed it to Amos, who sipped from it, too. It would be nice to get drunk together and forget all his problems. 

“You know, sometimes I miss Earth, and then you talk about it and that clears right up.” 

“Your Earth and my Earth are not the same place, Cap. I bet you lost your virginity at summer camp.” 

“How did you lose--” Holden started, and then stopped himself. He didn’t want the answer to that. 

“Don’t ask me that.” 

“Consider it retracted. I didn’t lose my virginity at summer camp.” 

“Prom, then?” 

“Homecoming.” Holden blushed. 

“What was her name?”

“Layla.” 

“Cute.” 

“She was. I was a different person then.” 

“How old were you?”

“14.” Amos’s eyes widened, like 14 was a really late age to lose your virginity. Holden had considered it early, and then decided he was lucky he got to think that.

“How old are you now?” It felt weird that Amos didn’t already know, but it wasn’t like they kept track of that kind of thing. He didn’t know how old Amos was, but he figured he was only a little older than Holden was. Time didn’t really seem to pass the same way for them, and a calendar based on the time it took the Earth to travel around the sun was simply not as relevant in the free-float of space. Holden only knew his birthday because his parents sent him a celebratory message every year. That, and the thing Naomi let him have. 

“34.” He paused. “Maybe 35, actually. Do you know what month it is on Earth?” 

“No fucking idea.” 

“I think my birthday is coming up. That’s a fucking bummer.” 

“Why, you have something planned?”

“Yes, actually.” 

“Someone throwing you a party?” It would probably be a bad idea to tell the truth, but that had never stopped Holden before. 

“Naomi and I have a… private tradition.”

“What, she gives you 35 birthday spanks?” 

“No. Well, not ‘no, she doesn’t spank me,’ but no, that’s not a birthday thing.” 

“Filing that away for later.” 

“Is your brain just an endless catalogue of porn?” 

“Isn’t yours?” 

“No. Though, I think the more time I spend with you, the more it might as well be.” 

“Yeah? I make you horny?” _Was it not obvious?_ Holden took a big, painful gulp from the bottle, and then admitted: 

“Immeasurably.” Amos smiled at that, and nudged Holden’s shoulder with his own. Amos was so much bigger than him, and it drove him crazy. 

“So what’s this dirty little tradition?”

“She fucks me with a strap-on.”

“Really? I was kidding about that.” 

“I’m not. Hottest fucking thing in the whole world. She bought it for my birthday a couple years ago and every year since I wake up with it in my mouth. Spends the day making me beg her to fuck me with it, and then she does.” Amos processed that in a confusing silence. 

“If you need a cock to wake up to on your birthday this year, I’m all yours.” 

“I’ll let you know if I do.” Holden took another big swig, and so did Amos. Holden laid down and stared at the green clouds. Amos laid down beside him with the same arm-out invitation as he’d given the night before. Holden accepted, laid his head on Amos’s chest, with no excessive exhaustion to blame it on. 

He got drunk on the comfort. Also on the booze. 

###  **Amos**

Amos liked cuddling with Holden. It was pleasant. 

Amos hated to look a gift horse in the mouth. He liked to let good things be good. Holden’s head tucked under his arm was good. Holden talking dirty, telling him sexy secrets and not getting offended by Amos’s brutal fantasies was just about the best thing that had ever happened to him. But Amos did promise he’d cut the man’s dick off and feed it to him if he ever cheated on Naomi, so they had a problem. 

Holden was leading him on, which was exciting if he was going to put out, but disappointing if he wasn’t. And if he was going to put out, then he’d be cheating on Naomi. Amos supposed this is what regular people call a ‘moral dilemma.’ It left a bad taste in his mouth. 

“So,” Amos started, breaking a long and comfortable silence. It took a lot more than what they’d had to get him drunk, but he felt a little bold. “You’ve been hitting on me.” 

Holden was no lightweight either, but just about everyone’s tolerance was lower than Amos’s, and belter booze was strong, and he had had more. So, he was drunker. The pink of his cheeks was adorable, and Amos didn’t think he’d ever used that word before. 

“You’ve been hitting on me longer,” he accused. 

“I’m not the one with a girlfriend.” 

“Right. About that.” Holden sat up to take another sip, even though he’d already had too many, then settled back in Amos’s embrace. Amos waited for him to explain. “I talked to her this morning.” Again, Amos waited. Holden didn’t say anything, just looked nervous and drunk. Really drunk. Amos guessed he should’ve stopped him a long time ago. He wasn’t used to being the responsible one. 

“About?”

“Told her we cuddled. She laughed. It is kind of funny, you and me cuddling. I like it though. You’re big. I could drown in you. Want to.”

“Okay, baby boy, that’s enough liquor for you.” 

“M’not drunk. Call me baby boy again.” 

“What did she say?” 

“Well, I told her we cuddled, and that I couldn’t stop thinking about having sex with you. You know, because you’re so hot and your dick is so big and you have big hands.” Amos should’ve stopped his drunken rambling and made him get to the point. He obviously wasn’t going to do that. Holden continued: “Well, I didn’t know your dick was so big until after the phone call. I mean, I had my suspicions. You’re big all over, so a little cock would be disappointing. Don’t get me wrong, I’d still let you fuck me with your little cock, but I like big. Naomi calls me a size queen all the time. Her strap is huge, and I’m such a slut for it. But anyway, then you put on that fucking incredible show for me, jerking that massive cock on my side of the bed, rubbing your asshole like you want something inside you. Never thought about that hole before, but I think I wanna lick it now. Would you let me lick your hole? I’ll be good.” Holden was looking up at him with wide, watery eyes. He knew Holden would be good for him. He wanted to forget Naomi and sit on Holden’s face, let him have what he wanted. But Holden had made him into the kind of guy that thinks about things, at least a little bit, and he wasn’t drunk enough not to care about Naomi’s feelings. He was surprised to think that maybe he’d never be drunk enough not to care about Naomi’s feelings. Or Holden’s. 

“What did Naomi say?”

“She said I’m allowed to have what I want.” He said matter-of-factly. That was hard to believe. Amos wasn’t one hundred percent sure it was even true. Holden wasn’t the kind of guy who lied, especially not about something like this, and not when the people he cared about most could get hurt. But Amos had also never seen Holden this drunk. Holden never got this drunk. He’d drink with Amos, Naomi, and Alex, but was always the most sober of the three. He didn’t get sloppy, just softer around the edges. He got handsy with Naomi, a little flirty with all three of them, but never lost control. 

Amos wondered if Holden was just letting loose for fun, or if he was drinking away his problems. He was sure it was the latter. He hoped he didn’t qualify as one of those problems. He was sure that he did. 

“She gave us her _blessing?”_

“Yeah. Said I should go for it. Let’s go for it.” He slid his hand down Amos’s chest. It wasn’t sexy. 

“If you’re lying to get me to put out, I will hate you for it.” Holden frowned. 

“Since when do I have to lie to get you to put out? You were gonna suck me off this morning and you didn’t even know she’d be okay with it.”

“I knew you’d say no.”

“Fucking tease. So mean. You owe me.” 

“I _owe_ you?”

“No. You never owe me. But it would be nice for you to make it up to me.” 

“Not while you’re drunk.”

“I’m not drunk. I promise.”

“You’re so drunk.” 

“Wanna get drunk on your come down my throat.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Your dick not being inside me already doesn’t make any sense.” 

“If Naomi really said it’s okay, we’ll have a conversation about it when you’re sober.” 

“Since when are you all responsible?” Holden was supposed to be the responsible one, and Amos was supposed to be the one who only cared about sex. He didn’t like this role-reversal thing.

“Since I started caring about you. Don’t know when it happened.” Holden didn’t say anything to that. He took his hand off of Amos’s chest, but didn’t otherwise pull away. He buried his face in Amos’s armpit. 

“You know you’re my best friend?” It was a muffled admission, but Amos heard it. 

“I didn’t know that.”

“You are.” He didn’t think that was true. Naomi was Holden’s best friend. Maybe Amos was his best friend if being his girlfriend disqualified Naomi from being his best friend. 

“Okay.” 

“You’re my best friend, and I think about your cock in my ass every single second of every single day.” 

“I think about it a lot, too. You have a nice ass.” 

“Want you to like me for more than just my nice ass. Wanna be more than a body you put your dick in.” He was. Holden meant something to him in a way a hookup never had before. He wasn’t ready to admit that. 

“Okay.”

“But also? I wanna be less than that. Wanna be a little toy you shove into whenever you want to.” That, he knew how to do. 

“Okay.” 

“My mouth or my asshole. Whichever one you want. Whatever you want, whenever.” 

“Okay.”

“Say something other than ‘okay.’” 

“What do you want me to say?” 

“Say you will. Say you will and that it’s gonna be okay.” 

“I will, baby boy. It’s gonna be okay.” 

Holden fell asleep. Amos didn’t. 

Amos watched the sun set on Ilus, and hoped Holden still wanted him in the morning.


	5. but there ain't no way i'm ever gonna love you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title references meat loaf's song "two outta three ain't bad"

###  **Amos**

The sun was just threatening to rise when Holden stirred beside him, waking Amos up from what was more of a nap than a night’s rest. He hadn’t intended to fall asleep at all, preferring to keep a lookout in case something went horrible, but contentment lulled him to sleep. 

The first thing he heard in the morning was “this was a mistake.” That figured. Amos had expected a freak out. It was a drag, and it meant that things were going to get really awkward between them really fast, but he’d had pretty much all night to prepare himself for it. He would just have to pretend not to care. Amos wasn’t exactly practiced in the art of pretending not to care. He was used to not caring in the first place, so he didn’t have the tools to reverse-engineer that. But he knew how to hide what he was thinking, so that would have to be close enough. 

He didn’t know what to do with the realization that he wasn’t mourning the loss of the sex. He knew he could get laid on Ilus. He and Wei had kind of a good thing going, that would be easy. Not because she was easy, but because she liked him. They liked each other. It would be a lot easier than Holden. And if Amos needed a guy, which he didn’t really care about one way or the other, he could probably make that happen, too. That guy who was always hanging around the cute doctor, F… something? He seemed like a horny fucker. Maybe he’d be down if Amos had a craving for cock. Just about anyone would be easier and less complicated than Holden. That didn’t stop him from wanting. 

He wasn’t broken up about not getting to have sex with Holden. Sure, sex with Holden would be better than sex with anyone else, but he could be satisfied otherwise, and satisfied was all he ever really needed to be. 

Except the nights he spent with Holden had given him a glimpse at something a little bit bigger than satisfaction. His mind supplied the word “contentment,” but it felt bigger even than that. “Love” was a bridge way too far. It wasn’t that, and was never going to be that. It wasn’t a denial, just a fact. Amos didn’t have the capacity for that, and wasn’t interested in looking for it. But it was somewhere between contentment and love.

It didn’t matter. Holden had decided it was a mistake. So it was a mistake. 

Holden grumbled, patting one hand over Amos’s chest as if re-familiarizing himself with reality.  _ I’m here, Holden, _ he thought,  _ remember?  _ When Holden seemed to understand where he was, Amos thought he saw him smile. It was barely perceptible in the low light. It must’ve been Amos’s imagination. 

Holden groaned as he sat up, and then again, louder, as he stood from the ground. Amos stood up more easily. 

“Let’s get going. There’s no way people aren’t already assuming we’re dead. I need a painkiller or twenty. Then I guess we gotta talk about this,” he said, while rolling up the blanket and stuffing it into the bag with the other supplies. Amos really didn’t want to have the let’s-stay-friends-even-though-we-both-wanna-fuck-each-other talk. He didn’t want to hear Holden’s stupid self-sabotaging garbage. If Holden so much as implied “it’s not you, it’s me,” Amos was sure he’d punch the fucker in the face. 

“We don’t have to talk about it, Cap. I get it. It’s not happening. Don’t sweat it.” Holden paused, and turned to face him. 

“What? After all that? You don’t want m- You don’t want to?” Holden’s puppy-dog eyes were confusing. Of course Amos wanted to. Holden was the one who didn’t, right? 

“You said it was a mistake.” Holden let out a breath. 

“No. That? No. It was a mistake to sleep outside, a mile away from anyone or anything on a planet made out of murder. It was a mistake to get drunk off my ass and be this fucking hungover. I feel like my brain is nails and all of the blood pumping into it is also nails. This? Me and you? Not a mistake.” 

“It might be. Now would be the time to get out before we actually mess something up.”

“Is that what you want?” Holden looked disappointed, which was good. It meant they were on the same page.

“No. I wanna make a mess out of you. I want to come on your face right now, and make you wear what you don’t swallow back to the settlement so everyone knows you’re my property. And then I want you to suck on my soft cock ‘til it’s hard again for you, and then sit on it like I know you’ve been dying to do for days.” 

“I can make  _ some _ of that happen for you.” 

“I also need us to be okay  _ after. _ We got a family to get home to. If fucking your ass makes you not my brother anymore, I don’t want to.”

“That is a baffling sentence. But I agree with the sentiment.” 

“So can we do this, brother?” Holden got closer to him. Amos pressed their foreheads together, and cradled Holden’s jaw in his hand. 

“Yes,” Holden whispered, like a prayer. 

Amos didn’t know if he was allowed to kiss Holden, so he didn’t, even though he wanted to. 

###  **Holden**

Holden didn’t know if he was allowed to kiss Amos, so he didn’t, even though he wanted to. 

They stayed like that for longer than they should’ve, but not as long as Holden wanted them to. Holden tried to remember what Miller told him the day before.  _ This is not love,  _ he breathed in.  _ Naomi is love, _ he breathed out.  _ This is just fun,  _ he breathed in.  _ I am allowed to have this, _ he breathed out. He tried not to think about the fact that he was relying on advice from a ghost. 

“Are you having some kind of panic attack?” Holden didn’t think he was. He was just processing. Badly. 

“No, I’m good.” 

“Good. I don’t know what I would do about that.” They started walking toward the settlement. Holden hoped they could make it back before the settlers woke up. 

“I imagine you’d offer to face-fuck it out of me.”

“Would that help? I can do that.” 

“I’m good. I think your cock in my mouth would make me throw up right now.” Holden figured that’s not a thing he should say to someone, but Amos laughed his ass off. It was nice to not have to worry so much about what he said before he said it. Amos wasn’t a fragile flower. Maybe Holden could handle this casual thing. 

“Thanks,” he said when he could stop laughing long enough. 

“Sorry. I’m so hungover.” 

“I know, kid.” He hated that. 

“Ew, do not call me ‘kid.’”

“No? You liked ‘baby boy’ last night.” 

“‘Baby boy’ is hot. ‘Kid’ is what I can’t get Miller to stop calling me, and it’s very not hot.” 

“‘Baby boy’ it is, then.” 

“Yeah.” The pet name shouldn’t feel right coming from Amos’s mouth, but it did. He liked it. It felt warm. It made him feel protected. Like he didn’t have to have the weight of humanity on his shoulders alone. He would not say that out loud to anyone; he couldn’t explain it if he did. 

They walked wordlessly for a while. For the first time, Holden didn’t feel awkward in the silence. He just basked in the comfort of being alone with Amos, and enjoyed the promise of something more later. He didn’t speak until he had something to say. 

“So, I remember the gist of what happened last night, but I’m fuzzy on the specifics. Do I have something to be sorry for?” 

“Not sorry. Maybe embarrassed.” He figured that. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be all non-judgmental?”

“Oh, I’m not judging you. But I reserve the right to make fun of you, anyway, size queen.” Did he tell him that? 

“I like big cock. Not going to apologize for that,” Holden said. It felt weird being so casually sexual. They were just walking in the middle of nowhere, talking about cock like it was nothing. Amos was changing him in a lot of ways. He didn’t quite mind. 

“Good. Though, you did tell me you’d still take me if I was small.” Who says that kind of thing? Holden knew he got a little flirty when he drank, but it had been a long while since he really got drunk. He didn’t think he’d do it again any time soon.

“Well, sure. What am I gonna say, ‘nevermind’? Would be awkward.” 

“You’d suck my dick to avoid a little awkwardness?” 

“I’m just saying, if I said ‘I wanna suck your dick’ and you pulled it out for me, I’m not gonna be like ‘eh, it’s a little on the small side, put it back.’ I’d hope you’d do me the same courtesy.” 

“Fair.” Amos laughed. Holden liked making Amos laugh. 

The closer they got to civilization, if you could call it that, the more Holden freaked out on the inside. It was one thing to flirt. It was one thing to think about sex, and talk about sex, and plan to have sex. Holden figured it was other thing to  _ have _ sex. He knew the minute they got back to their room, Amos was going to take Holden’s clothes off and have his way with him. Maybe, if Holden was lucky, Amos would take his own clothes off, too, and he’d get to look at that perfect body again. Either way, he’d push Holden onto his knees, or throw him onto the mattress or against a wall, and take him like he was property. That’s what Holden wanted. At least, that’s what Holden said he wanted. 

He was starting to consider that maybe he wanted something else, at least at first. Amos could spank him and slap him and spit on him and split him open later. Right now, he wanted Amos to treat him like he was precious, kiss him slow and deep and then fuck him slower and deeper. It was probably too much to ask. 

“‘You nervous?” Amos asked, like he read Holden’s mind. Holden worried his face gave everything away. He was never as good at hiding what he was thinking from people as Amos was. 

“Should I be?”

“Well, I’m gonna fuck you when we get back, right?”

“I hope so.” 

“Are you nervous about it?” Holden considered lying. It would probably be sexier if he wasn’t. 

“A little,” he admitted. 

“I don’t have to hurt you if you don’t want me to. I know how to be gentle.” 

“Would it suck for you?”

“No? Are you kidding? You’re the one who said you wanted to be a toy I shove into whenever I want to.” Had he said that? It wasn’t false. 

“You said you wanted to fuck my face until I cry.”

“I said I  _ fantasize _ about fucking your face until you cry. It’s a pretty picture. What I  _ want _ is to have sex that’s good for both of us. If you lie to me about what’s good for you, I’m gonna be really mad about it.”

“I would like to try the rough thing. Just, maybe that shouldn’t be the first time I get fucked by a man?” Amos appeared to be mulling that over. He smiled, and it was scary. 

“‘Makes sense. Didn’t know you were a virgin.”

“I’m not a virgin. You know I’m not a virgin.” 

“Never been with a man, though. Half-virgin.” 

“I’ve been with guys. A long time ago. Just never… not been on top.” Amos laughed at him again, and he was starting to think maybe he shouldn’t like making Amos laugh. It comforted him nonetheless, even at his own expense. 

“You on top is a cute picture.”

“I can be flexible.”

“Yeah? I’m looking forward to that.” 

Holden wished he could be walking in the middle of nowhere with Amos forever. 

✧✧✧

Because nothing in Holden’s life could be good, things were bad when they finally set foot back in the settlement. No one was around except Elvi, Fayez, Wei, and Murtry, who were gathered together looking concerned. Wei had a cut across her cheek that Holden didn’t think she had when they left, and Fayez had a bandage around his arm. It was unlikely the two got in a knife fight. 

“Where could you two have possibly been?” asked a very frantic Elvi. Holden didn’t have a good answer for that. She didn’t deserve the harsh ‘none of your fucking business’ that Holden would’ve given Murtry, but he couldn’t exactly say ‘Amos and I got drunk and had a picnic in the middle of no where. We didn’t mean to stay out all night, but I fell asleep in his arms.’ 

“What happened?” he asked instead of clueing her in. 

“Another… swarm, would you call it?” 

“The big, sharp, knife bugs,” offered Fayez, who appeared to be trying to comfort her. “From when you first touched down.” Anyone else might’ve considered it good luck to have missed it, but it was Holden’s job to help these people, and he’d been out flirting with his mechanic. It reiterated Holden’s suspicion that he was not allowed to have fun. 

“God damn it,” muttered Amos, and Holden wished he could confidently say the man was pissed about the bugs, but it was equally likely to be about the fact that they weren’t going to have sex any time soon. Holden wished he didn’t echo the sentiment. Luckily, the exclamation was warranted, so no one interrogated it. 

“It was worse this time,” Fayez explained. “They flew lower, like they recalculated and came back with a vengeance.” 

“You think it was a  _ targeted attack?” _ Holden doubted it. None of the natural life on Ilus seemed to even register the colony’s presence. 

“That’s the rumor, but it seems unlikely,” offered Elvi. 

“No one with common sense thinks that,” Murtry chimed in, gruff as ever. 

“Ilus common sense ain’t the same as Earth common sense,” Holden said. He thought he saw Amos smile. 

“What’s that mean?” 

“We don’t know how this planet thinks. We don’t know  _ if _ this planet thinks. The more we try to impose our worldview on it, the more it hurts us. We have to play by Ilus’s rules, or we don’t make it out of this alive.” He didn’t say that they probably wouldn’t make it out of this alive anyway. The likelihood was slim. He just hoped he got to have sex with Amos before the planet grew a mouth and swallowed them all whole. 

“What do you suggest? As the guy who  _ miraculously _ wasn’t around when it happened?” It felt like an accusation. But then again, on some level, everything Murtry said did. 

“What do I suggest? I suggest we all get the hell off the planet, or better, go back in time to before anyone ever came. What’s gonna happen, though, is we’re gonna treat everyone who got hurt to the best of our ability. Isn’t  _ the Edward Israel _ supposed to be detecting when these things are going to happen?” 

“We are,” said Murtry. “What  _ the Israel _ can’t do is stop it.” 

“We got as many people inside as we could, but we didn’t have much notice,” Elvi’s voice was softer. Holden wished she could just tell them everything. He had a headache.

“The fuckers are small. And they don’t exactly have a drive signature,” Fayez added. 

“Alright, alright, I’m not blaming RCE. Is it just a bunch of cuts like before? Or anything worse?” 

“Just deeper cuts, mostly. A lot of people need stitches. Lucia is working on it, and everyone in our team that knows their way around a suture. The clinic is overflowed and understaffed, but anyone at risk of life-threatening blood loss has been helped already.”

“Can always count on you, Doctor Okoye.” Holden hoped that didn’t come off as a flirtation. He didn’t have time to be concerned about it. “We tested the blood last time, right? These things don’t cause infections or diseases?” 

“None that we can detect,” she assured him, blushing. Fuck. Holden ignored it. 

“Okay, what I’m gathering is that this is not the worst thing that could’ve happened here. If anyone has a reason for me to think otherwise, speak now.” 

“It’s not apocalyptic, Holden, but I wouldn’t say we’re in the clear.” It was more post-apocalyptic than anything else, but Holden didn’t say that. “I don’t think these people can handle any more cause for panic,” Elvi said.

“Then they shouldn’t have come to an alien world where the bugs have blades for wings.” 

“You can say that again,” Murtry snarled. 

“Neither should’ve you. We all should’ve stayed home, and we’re all fucked because we didn’t. No one gets to be on their high horse about this, especially not you.” Murtry rolled his eyes. Holden ignored him. “We’ll do what we can to mitigate the panic later. Until then, I can give stitches and so can Amos. Let’s get this handled.” 

They were walking toward the clinic when Amos pulled Holden aside. 

“What are the odds you say ‘fuck this’ and we just go fool around instead of playing nurse?” 

“Incredibly low.”

“Figures. Thought I’d ask.” 

“Tonight, I’m all yours.” 

“Right. One more thing.”

“We have to go.”

“I gotta question,” he insisted. Holden signaled for him to ask it. “Do I get to kiss you?”

“Right now? Where anyone could see?”

“No. You know I love ya, but I wouldn’t be caught dead kissing your face.” 

“You love me?” 

“Yeah, little brother,” he said, like it was obvious. “You’re family.”

“Right.”

“You thought I meant-”

“No.”

“Wait, do  _ you?  _ Like _ that?” _

“No.” 

“‘Cause if you do, this’ll get weird really fast.” 

“I don’t.”

“Good. Don’t start.” 

“Not a possibility.” 

“Glad we’re on the same page. So what do you think?”

“About what?” 

“Kissing me. Later.” 

“Yeah. Kissing is… good.” Smooth. 

“Cool.” Amos started walking. Holden caught up with him, reached for his wrist, and pulled him to a stop. 

“I love you too, big brother.” Amos just smiled. 

They went to go give out some stitches. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh, you thought they were going to have sex in this chapter? sorry.


	6. have you ever seen the rain comin down on a sunny day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title references creedance clearwater revival's song "have you ever seen the rain?"

###  **Elvi**

Something weird was going on between Amos and Holden. Their behavior had been inexplicable all week, but going on a walk in the late afternoon and coming back in the early morning on a planet full of dangerous unknowns was a level of irresponsible she didn’t expect from James Holden. Of course, she supposed she didn’t know him very well. It wasn’t like the idea of James Holden she had in her head. Maybe that didn’t mean much. 

“Do you think they know something we don’t?” She asked Fayez after she had given the last of the necessary medical care. She looked at Holden, who was talking to Murtry, presumably moving on to whatever new issue needed his immediate attention. 

“Holden and Murtry?” Fayez clarified through a bite of his protein bar lunch. 

“Holden and Amos. They went on some sort of mission last night and didn’t invite anyone. We have a right to know what they know.” 

“Mission? That’s what they’re calling it?” Fayez laughed. Elvi didn’t know why. 

“They’re not calling it anything. Holden ignored me when I asked.”

“Is this about Holden ignoring you or about your scientific research?” 

“I resent the question,” she asserted, and they both knew it wasn’t an answer. “Maybe it’s about my own curiosity. Spending the night in the desert here is a whole new level of stupid. They had to have a reason to do it.” 

“Or they’re fucking.” That broke Elvi’s brain. How did Fayez say that so casually? No way that was the case. Elvi’s imagination didn’t have room for the possibility. 

“Don’t be crass.”

“Don’t be blind.” 

“But–”

“I’m sorry. I know you wanted it to be you.” 

“You’re crazy, Fayez.” 

She didn’t stop thinking about it all day. 

###  **Amos**

Amos didn’t need sex all of the time. He was a horny fucker, sure, but he understood that shit happened, and sometimes he didn’t get his cock sucked even if he wanted to. He wouldn’t interrupt a finicky ship maneuver on the Roci to ask Alex for a handjob. 

He could understand that there were times when life came first and sex came second. The main thing that pissed him off was that this didn’t feel like one of them. Amos had given worse injuries to guys for just looking at him wrong. Sure, the bugs were freaky-looking little robot bastards, but a Baltimore rat could do more long-lasting damage. 

Amos wondered if this was Holden’s way of putting off sex. He’d been wanton for it the night before, but he was drunk. That morning, he’d been nervous about it. Maybe he was changing his mind. That didn’t seem probable. 

More likely, he was trying to save face. If they’d ignored all of their responsibilities and went back to their room now, that would probably look suspicious. Plus, someone could very easily come looking for them and catch and eyeful of sweaty man sex. 

Amos really didn’t care who knew they were having sex. These were all strangers, who he’d either die with or never see again when they left. The only person that mattered was Naomi, and she knew and didn’t care. He still found that hard to believe, but Holden wouldn’t lie. They would probably have to tell Alex sometime, because Naomi wouldn’t, and that might be weird. Holden wouldn’t let him be the only one who didn’t know something, but Amos wondered if he was better off not knowing that he was the only person not tangled up in their weird web of incestuous crew sex. Though, Amos figured, they might as well turn this three-way thing into a foursome. But Alex, Holden, and Naomi didn’t think like he did. 

Everyone had the medical care they apparently  _ so desperately _ needed, but Holden still had to do shit with just about everyone on the fucking planet, so Amos had a lot of downtime to think about that fun little foursome idea. 

His fantasies had been becoming less and less brutal towards Holden, and Amos wasn’t happy about that. He was going soft. He decided the way to fix that was to have an extra brutal fantasy about him. To put some balance in the universe, or some shit. 

He imagined himself pushing into Holden, rough and merciless in his unused hole. Alex spat on the man’s face, and Naomi made him beg for the Martians fat cock in his mouth. He didn’t get to come until he was stuffed full of as many loads as that tight little body could fit, a mess spilling out of his ass and running down his legs. 

It was hot as shit, but of course Amos couldn’t leave it like that. He was the aftercare guy, apparently, even in his fantasies. He kissed Holden, told him shit like “you did so good, baby boy, such a perfect little slut for me,” and held him, naked and spent, until he fell asleep. 

Gross. Amos stopped thinking about it. 

Holden looked too fine with all of this. He was doing his job, serious and disciplined as ever, not bummed about not getting to be fucked right now. It was annoying. Amos decided he could stand to be a little more worked up. He could do something about that. 

###  **Holden**

Holden was talking to Elvi and Fayez, going over what they knew and what they feared, when Amos snuck up on him and rested his big hand in the small of his back. 

“Hey, Jim. Anything I can help you with?” Holden didn’t think Amos had ever called him ‘Jim’ before. His own name shouldn’t send a shiver down his spine like that. Paired with that massive palm pressing intimately against his back, Amos might as well have pulled Holden’s pants down right there and then. It might’ve even been less embarrassing.

Elvi raised her eyebrows, and Fayez smirked. Holden had to pretend not to notice. 

“I think we’re good here, Burton,” Holden countered. Amos appeared to be amused by that. 

“Alrighty, brother,” he took back his hand and Holden mourned the loss. “Then I think I’m gonna go see if Wei needs anything.” He nodded to the security guard he’d been chatting up the day before. Wei, that was her name. Amos was threatening to go have sex with someone else, and Holden was powerless to stop him. Even if there was a way to do that undetected in the middle of his conversation with the two scientists, he didn’t have the leverage. What was he supposed to say,  _ ‘you know I would rather have sex with Naomi than you, but you’re not allowed to rather have sex with Wei than me’?  _ That wouldn’t be fair. He had to force himself to be fine with it. 

“You go do that,” he said, and just hoped he was calling Amos’s bluff. 

###  **Amos**

Holden had called his bluff, so he needed to up the ante. He found Wei at the commissary. 

“‘Buy you a drink?” Amos offered, showing off a handful of bullets to barter. 

“Hard to say no to Daddy Warbucks.”

“I don’t understand that reference, but I don’t hate the sound of it.” 

“Don’t get too worked up, ‘just means you’re rich.”

“Never been rich before. I don’t mind it.”

Neither Amos nor Wei were exceptionally communicative people, so they drank in companionable silence for a while. 

“You know,” Wei slurred after two new empty shot glasses took their place in the lineup next to the 3 that were already there when Amos came in, “it’s probably not a great idea to give all of your bullets to the guy who also has all of the booze.” 

“If it gets me booze, I can deal with the consequences.” 

“Even if the consequence is a shot in the chest?” Amos laughed at that. 

“I’d like to see someone try.”

“I don’t know, I think I could take you.” 

“You wanna start a bar fight with me right now? It’s barely midday.” 

“There are better ways I can think of to get all this aggression out.” There it was. The proposition was on the table. Amos’ room was down a tiny hall. His bed was two mattresses pressed together on the floor, but he was big enough that he could probably get away with saying he didn’t fit comfortably in one, instead of telling her he’d been sharing with Holden. It would be easy to get laid right now. 

Holden didn’t have any right to tell him he couldn’t sleep with Wei. Holden could be a hypocrite sometimes, but usually Amos and the Roci crew were on the good end of that. He’d let things slide for them that didn’t slide for anybody else, forgave them readily and easily. Amos figured it was probably okay to be a hypocrite about things like that, but he didn’t really know the rules. He knew Holden wouldn’t get away with being a hypocrite about this. Holden would never be exclusively Amos’s, so Amos didn’t have to be exclusively Holden’s. It would make sense if that was why Holden acted so chill about it when he asked. He hoped it wasn’t because he actually didn’t care, but it could’ve been. Amos didn’t have any right to be upset about it. 

It was becoming clear to Amos that whether people had the right to feel something or not had very little influence on the way that they actually felt. This was one of the few little rules that Amos discovered from his outsider’s view of having emotions that actually applied to himself. He had no right to want Holden to be jealous. He wanted Holden to be jealous anyway. 

He was considering if actually having sex to make Holden jealous was a bridge too far, when chaos outside made the point irrelevant. He and his drunk companion went outside to check out the commotion. 

Wei was leaning on him for stability. It looked intimate, though he was ambivalent about it. He could use that to his advantage. Holden gave him a weird look, rolled his eyes, and then came towards him. 

“Whatever’s happening here, I’m ecstatic for you, but it’s gotta wait,” he said, not looking ecstatic at all. “There was a lightning strike, which means there are going to be more lightning strikes, which means everybody has to get inside somewhere. Preferably somewhere that isn’t one of the shitty little shacks everyone lives in. Murtry isn’t letting any settlers into RCE spaces, so that means the commissary or the clinic. Help me round people up and don’t take no for an answer from anyone who doesn’t have a death wish. I’ll meet you back here.” He ran off. 

“You should stay here. Unless you want to go to one of Murtry’s exclusive little clubs.” 

“I can help!” she offered, but her slurred speech gave away her weakness. 

“You could about an hour ago. Now you need to stay here and not make things worse.” A bolt of lightning jutted in a straight line from the sky. “It’s not worth the time it’ll take to get anywhere else. Please, just stay here. I don’t have time to try and convince you.” 

“Fine.” 

Amos ran straight to the houses he knew had kids in them. 

✧✧✧

The clouds went from green-white to green-grey and shielded the sun, turning daytime into night in the blink of an eye. The clinic was full and the commissary was filling fast. The RCE shelters that Murtry had declared off-limits to Belters had plenty of space, but Murtry had men blocking their entrances. So they crowded everyone into the commissary and waited out a storm that they had no reason to believe would ever end. 

The Belter mayor, commissioner, whatever, was frantically trying to keep track of everyone, but being split between two buildings with no means of communication between them meant they didn’t know who was lost and who was safely in the clinic. That didn’t stop anyone from assuming the worst. 

“Alright, alright! Everyone shut up!” Amos yelled over the constant panicked murmurs of the crowd. “We cleared out every home. No one died. We’d’ve heard somebody scream.” It wasn’t comforting. This was normally Holden’s job. The whispers picked up again. “I said shut up! If your people ain’t here, they’re in the clinic. Everyone knows this sucks. No point in bitching about it.” 

“Where’s Holden?” asked a voice he couldn’t be bothered to place. 

“Safe. Holden’s always safe. The bastard might be cursed, but he always manages to not die,” he didn’t know if he was trying to convince the voice or himself. “Little lightning’s not gonna be the thing that gets him dead. He’s probably in the clinic.” 

That was a lie. The clinic was full, and Holden knew better than to go there. Besides, he’d promised to meet him at the commissary, and he was dumb enough to make good on his word even if it was dangerous. So Holden must be somewhere not safe. 

“You’re gonna be a dumbass right now, aren’t you?” Wei asked. He’d been surprised that she had stayed. It would’ve been stupid for her to run across the settlement to RCE’s property when the commissary was just as safe, but she would’ve been more comfortable there, and honestly, more welcome. He wondered if she stayed for him, and then dismissed the idea. It wasn’t implausible, but he didn’t quite care. He felt an obligation to keep her safe, as long as it didn’t interfere with protecting the other people he cared about more. Helping her didn’t threaten Holden, Alex, or Naomi, so he could do it. It didn’t go any farther than that, except for wanting to fuck her. That was separate, anyway. 

“Yeah, probably,” he knew what she meant. He was going to go outside and look for Holden. Of course he was. But he wasn’t dumb enough not to think about it first. Only dumb enough to make the wrong decision. “Are you sober enough to hold down the fort?” 

“Sure, but no one here is going to listen to me. I can shoot someone if they start misbehaving?” That was hot. It shouldn’t be, but Amos was a man of simple tastes. 

“Something tells me shooting sardines in a can ain’t the answer here.”

“So what is?”

“Holden would know.”


	7. what do i care how much it may storm i got my mechanic to keep me warm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i got this just for you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title references dick powell's song "i've got my love to keep me warm"

###  **Holden**

“Miller? Miller! I’m alone! Where the fuck are you?” Holden belted. He didn’t know whose home he was invading, but he figured they wouldn’t mind as long as he didn’t die there. He wished it was less likely that he would. They’d have to forgive his corpse. 

The house, like all houses in the settlement, wasn’t built to withstand anything worse than a little rain. It would burn down in an instant if the lightning struck just right. Holden hoped they were right that the commissary and clinic wouldn’t. They were the best shot they had, built sturdier with some idea of sustainable shelter in mind, rather than as temporary homesteads that would be replaced when they sold the iron ore and had the money to invest in permanent homes. The house he squatted in was one of the sturdier ones, with a solid metal frame, but that didn’t make it reliable against the lightning. 

“You show up to shoot the shit whenever I need you least and  _ now _ you choose to go AWOL? What the fuck did you do?” Blue fireflies in Holden’s peripheral signaled Miller’s arrival. 

“You gotta stop blaming me for shit, kid. I’m just a tool.” 

“Your words, not mine.” 

“Okay, funny guy. What do you need me for? I’m working.”

“Tell me what’s happening!” 

“Looks like lightning.” 

“No shit! Why?”

“I ain’t ever been to Earth, tumang, but I’m pretty sure lightning don’t need a reason to strike.” 

“Last time this happened it was ‘cause  _ you _ made me connect something in the ruin. I haven’t been back since. What did  _ you _ connect?” 

“I’m telling you, nothing.” 

“How about the truth?” 

“You’re asking the guy with no hands what lever he pulled.” Holden processed that. 

“So this is just a storm?”

“This is just nature doing what nature does.”

“Right, trying to kill me.” 

“You really do think you’re the center of the universe, huh?”

“It always seems to end up being true.” 

“Touché. Do you need anything else, princess? I got a case to work.” 

“Could you make the lightning go away?”

“Good try. You’ll be fine, kid. Unless you’re afraid of thunder.” Miller disappeared in a thunderclap, and it was way too eerie to be a coincidence. 

Holden huddled in a corner, staying low to the ground like it might stop lightning from striking. There was nothing else he could do. The lightning was far too close to risk going outside, and unlike last time, it was unpredictable. He tried to connect a call to the Rocinante, but of course the signal was lost. He was ready to give another futile try for Amos’s terminal when he heard his voice outside. 

“Holden!” He wanted to think there was no way Amos was stupid enough to go out in the storm looking for him. There was no point in wasting the time. He opened the door. 

“What the fuck are you doing?” he called, more to get Amos’s attention than to actually reprimand him. Amos smiled when he saw him, and ran in his direction.

When Amos was safely in the house, or at least out of the rain, he wrapped Holden in his arms. Holden should’ve been furious that Amos risked his life for him, but instead he was just happy to be held. Amos put a hand on his cheek, and his gaze felt like a target lock. Or, no. Something different. Like a request for permission to board. Holden didn’t have the words to say yes. Instead, he tilted his head up and gave a nod so timid it might not have even registered. 

It must’ve, because Amos held Holden’s face in two hands and kissed him like he had seconds left to live.

Of course it would happen like this. Of course they would be starving for each other, adrenaline pumping, kissing open-mouthed and panting like they were drunk off the taste of each other. They pulled apart, foreheads pressed together, breathing each other in as they gasped for air.

“Why are you here and not in the commissary where it’s safe?” Holden had to ask. 

“Could ask you the same thing, baby boy,” Amos shrugged. Holden sighed deeply.

“I needed to talk to Miller.”

“Did I interrupt?” 

“No, he wasn’t any help. Turns out the storm is just a storm, and I’m paranoid.”

“Nah, not paranoid. Paranoid is when you ain’t gotta reason to be scared.”

“That’s not comforting.” Amos laughed, and kissed Holden again, softer this time. “ _ That’s _ comforting.” 

“Yeah? C’mere.” Amos sat on the couch and pulled Holden on top of him, one leg on either side of his lap. He held Holden close to him while they kissed, one hand at the small of his back and one migrating slowly to rest in the space where the top of his leg met his ass. 

“Mmm, you’re good at that.” It wasn’t the sexiest thing he could’ve said, and it didn’t have to be. There was time for sexy later. Right now, he wanted safety. Amos didn’t know how not to be sexy. He bit gently at Holden’s lower lip, and it ignited Holden’s entire body.

“Do you know whose house this is?” Apparently he did know how to be unsexy. 

“No idea.”

“I’m not the manners guy, how do you feel about having sex on somebody’s couch you don’t know?” 

“I figure it’s here or on their bed. Couch seems more polite, at least.”

“We could always not have sex in their house.”

“Good thing I’m not really the manners guy, either,” Holden said, pulling at the hem of Amos’s shirt. Amos laughed and took the hint, pulling it off the rest of the way while Holden dealt with his own layers. 

“Fucking gorgeous body,” Amos praised as he licked and sucked at Holden’s neck, and Holden couldn’t even be bothered to care that he was sure to leave a dark bruise on his pale skin. He let his head fall back, inviting the mark. “You gonna let me give you a hickey?” Holden’s moan might as well have been a yes. 

“What will Elvi think?” Amos teased. Holden could not care less. 

“What will  _ Wei _ think?” 

“Aw, are you jealous, babe?” 

“No.” Holden could feel how unconvincing it was. He pulled Amos back into the kiss, hoping he’d drop it. Amos stopped him. 

“You know you’re the only girl for me, Jim.” It was a joke, but there was sincerity in his eyes. He was trying to reassure Holden that there was nothing to worry about with Wei, without having to be vulnerable about it. 

“I don’t own you, Burton. I can’t say you’re not allowed to rather be having sex with Wei when I’d rather be having sex with Naomi.” He should’ve worded that nicer. Amos didn’t appear fazed by it.

“I wouldn’t rather be having sex with Wei. I  _ would _ rather be having sex with Naomi, though.” Holden laughed, and bit Amos’s jaw. 

“Don’t tell me that.” 

“I have eyes, don’t I?” Holden kissed him quiet. 

###  **Amos**

Amos deepened the kiss, his emboldened determination signaling the time for talking was over. He slid his hand down the back of Holden’s pants, squeezing his ass and eliciting an excited moan. He tentatively graced a finger over his tight hole, and was rewarded with a noise that could only be described as a whine. 

“Gonna let me pop your cherry, baby?” he teased. It was supposed to be a joke, but the growl of his voice made it more of a threat than anything. Holden shuddered, so he figured it worked anyway. “Let’s get you out of these pants. Want this perfect body naked for me.” 

Holden apparently didn’t need to be told twice. He made hurried work of his shoes, socks, and jeans. There was nothing tantalizing or seductive about it. There would be plenty of teasing later. Later, Amos would make him go slow, drink in the blush of his cheeks as he exposed every inch of himself. Now, he needed him naked just about yesterday. 

Holden’s naked body  _ was _ perfect. He had muscled arms and legs that were just the right amount of long, the sturdy build of an Earther. He was defined, rather than bulky; his strength was earned out of work and not forced out of vanity. Amos’s eyes trailed over those dusky pink little nipples, down his stomach, and over that slim waist that sloped into a nice, full ass. His cock stood thick and long against his chiseled abs, and his balls hung heavy. 

“Are you just gonna stare?” 

“Maybe.”

“Then take your pants off and let me stare at you back.” Amos found no reason not to oblige. He took his time a little, couldn’t help but tease. Holden’s little sigh was adorable. He couldn’t wait to see what other noises Holden would elicit for him. The heavy rain and thunder applauding outside gave them no reason to keep quiet. 

Holden dropped to his knees in front of Amos, surprising him. Amos had expected him to need a little bit of direction, but he must’ve been too eager to wait for it. Amos liked that. 

“You’re fucking huge,” Holden said, and it wasn’t flattery as much as an honest observation. There was a little bit of fear in his eyes. 

“You like huge, don’t you?” 

“Bigger than I know what to do with.” 

“Go slow, then. Storm’s not letting up, we got all the time in the world.”

Holden wrapped his hand around the base of Amos’s cock and rubbed the head on his lips. Teasing son of a bitch. He sucked the tip into his wet mouth, working his tongue around the sensitive ridge. Amos’s moan must’ve encouraged him deeper. He choked. 

“Spit in your hand, jerk what you can’t take. Get me nice and slick for you.” 

“Just so we’re perfectly clear, this dick is not going inside me without lube.” Amos laughed at that. 

“Good thing I brought some.”

“You brought lube into a lightning storm to come look for me?” 

“Nah, man, I’ve been trying to fuck you all day. Had it in my pocket. Wanted to be prepared if I got the chance.” 

“You really are always horny, huh?” 

“You’re a lucky guy.” Holden took instruction well, sucking as deep as he could and moving a slick hand over what he couldn’t take. Amos reveled in it. He would’ve been happy to finish down Holden’s throat and kiss the taste from his mouth, but he knew Holden was desperate to be fucked. He considered making Holden wait a day as payback, but only for a second. He wanted to be inside him, too. No point in punishing himself. “On your hands and knees.” 

“Wanna watch you,” he whined. 

“Cute. No.” 

“Please? Wanna see that big cock disappear in me. Fuck me on my back.” Amos had to grip the base of his own dick to stop himself from coming at that. Holden talking dirty was his new favorite thing. He would be spending every second of everyday discovering new ways to coax that out of him. 

“It’s gonna hurt more on your back.”

“I know.”  _ Oh.  _

“Let me be gentle with you tonight. Tomorrow I’ll rip your hole open all you want.” He was joking, but Holden seemed to be considering it. Kinky bastard. 

“Prep me on my back. You can fuck me on my hands and knees until I can handle it, then come in me on my back.” 

“I’m sorry, since when are you the guy who gets to give orders? I got half a mind to come on your fucking face and call it a night.” Holden’s eyes widened, and Amos knew he won. “Get on your hands and knees. If you’re good, I’ll consider letting you watch me come in you.” 

Holden got horizontal on the couch, his back arched like he’d been trained for this. Amos supposed he had been. 

“Good boy, such a pretty ass. Made for me.” That was all the warning he gave before he dove in with his tongue, lapping at the dark opening with practiced precision. Holden let out a moan that was more of a howl than anything else, and Amos would’ve smirked victoriously if his lips weren’t otherwise occupied. One hand kept Holden spread open, while the other tugged gently at Holden’s balls and ignored his desperate, leaking cock. 

“Need something inside me.” Amos spanked him. 

“I know what you need.” Holden whimpered. 

“Please!” 

“Fucking needy little slut, aren’t you? ‘Thought you wanted to be a good boy for me.” Amos slicked a finger in his mouth and shoved it in, quick and merciless. Holden’s yelp was delicious. “That what you want, baby boy? You that desperate to be filled?”

“Yes!” 

“Okay, precious, I’ll fill you up.” He lubed his two fingers, meeting resistance as he pushed them both in at the same time. It didn’t stop him. Holden hissed at the intrusion. “Can this tight little hole even take my big, hard cock?”

“Yes, Amos, do it,” Holden demanded.

“You are the cutest thing. I don’t take orders from you, Jim, not here.” He slipped another slick finger inside. “You better get used to that.” 

“I’m sorry. Just want your cock so bad.” 

“I know, baby. Gonna have to train you better.” Holden moaned. “How do you feel on three of my fat fingers? You still like these big hands?” 

“Yes. Love your big hands. Want your big dick.” Amos stroked himself in contemplation. 

“Okay, baby boy. This time, I’m gonna let you have what you need. But don’t think being a brat is gonna get you anywhere with me. Next time, you behave or you get punished for it. Not playing this game with you.” 

“Yes sir,” he said. Sarcasm. Amos had expected him to submit a lot easier. He wouldn’t say it, but he preferred the challenge. He could play the cat and mouse game. 

###  **Holden**

Amos shut Holden up real quick with the press of his cockhead against his asshole. 

“Relax, Jim. Be good,” Amos said. Naomi was really the only person who called him Jim, but he didn’t mind it coming from Amos. It was intimate. Though, he worried this new context for it might cause a very unfortunate Pavlovian response. If his dick twitched every time he heard his own fucking name, that could be a problem. 

Holden took a deep breath as Amos pressed inside, and his moan was beyond ecstatic. It was beyond human. Amos fucked him slow, let him get used to being split open. It was not the same with a big plastic cock. He could get addicted to the way Amos moved inside him, pushing against his sweet spot with practiced thrusts. ‘Devastated’ was the only word his mind supplied for the feeling of loss when he pulled out. 

“Turn around, baby boy. Gonna give you what you want so bad.” 

Holden flipped onto his back eagerly, spreading his legs wide and reveling in the humiliation of being fully exposed. He was painfully hard, leaking precome on his stomach, but didn’t dare touch himself without permission. 

“You look perfect like this, Jim. Wanna keep you naked and wet for me all the time.” Amos pressed his hands on Holden’s inner thighs, pushing his legs apart further. Holden loved the way he talked. He loved the humiliation of being teased, dominated, and owned. Amos praised him and punished him in equal measure, and it was everything he needed. 

Amos pushed inside him again, proving himself right. It  _ was _ more painful like this. But God, it was so much better. He watched as Amos’s eyes fell shut and his mouth open. Holden hadn’t paid a lot of attention to how attractive he found Amos’s face, but in that moment, he could just stare at it forever. 

“Gonna finish inside you, brother. You want that? Or you want it on your pretty face?

“Inside me, please. Need you leaking out of me.” Holden was mostly too self-conscious to talk dirty, but if you fucked him hard enough, an animal instinct kicked in. Amos fucked him more than hard enough. 

“Fuck,” Amos let out, and Holden drank it in like a man dying of thirst. As much as Holden loved Amos’s sexy dom persona, he liked it even more when he managed to break him out of it. Amos wrapped his hand around the nape of Holden’s neck and pulled him in for a desperate kiss as he came inside him. He barely needed to touch Holden’s cock before he was coming as well, spilling all over his own abs. Holden rocked his hips, riding Amos through his orgasm. They kissed, starving for one another until they were both spent. 

###  **Amos**

Amos was met with a wide-eyed look as he licked up the come on Holden’s abs. 

“What? Can’t leave a mess in some stranger’s house,” he said through a mouthful of jizz. “You taste good.” 

Holden kissed him. “No, I don’t.” Amos laughed. 

“You wanna taste me?” he pushed a finger into Holden’s sloppy hole, then held it up to Holden’s face. 

“Gross, no. Only thing that tastes worse than come is lube.” Amos shrugged, laughing, and wiped his hand on Holden’s bare chest. “Ew, you monster.”

“So you’re not gonna let me come in your mouth later?” 

“I’m gonna let you do whatever you want to me. Can’t promise to like the taste.” 

“That works for me.” 

The storm had not waned in its fervor at all. Amos watched Holden get cleaned up, but neither of them moved to get dressed. They had plenty of time to lounge around naked, joke and talk dirty. Even as lightning threatened to strike the shelter, they felt safe together. 

  
  
  



	8. let's talk about you and me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title references salt-n-pepa's song "let's talk about sex"

###  **Holden**

They got dressed when the thunder stopped, and Holden immediately missed getting to look at Amos’s naked body. They’d been kissing and talking lazily for what must’ve been three hours, Amos admiring Holden’s hickey and playfully trying to get Holden to let him deepen it. 

“It’s already humiliating that I let you do that,” said Holden, swatting him away. 

“Don’t you like humiliating?” Amos teased. 

“Not when it interferes with doing my job.” 

“You’re no fun.” 

When they went outside, it was still raining pretty hard, but the thunder and lightning had passed. There were no buildings actively on fire, but it was hard to tell in the low light what had sustained damage, and there was no way the lightning didn’t hit anything. There was an alarming number of blackened discolorations on the ground, branching out like trees where the lightning had touched down. Lightning on Earth had never been this close together outside of cartoons. Amos must’ve gone looking for Holden before it got bad, because if he’d been outside when that lightning was striking the settlement, there was no way he’d make it out of that alive. 

When they entered the commissary, they were met with a wall of whispers from terrified colonists.

“Shut up!” Amos demanded. 

“Where you been?” asked a colonist. 

“Couldn’t get here in time. Had to wait it out in one of the houses. Thank God for no third amendment.”

“I don’t even know what that means, Cap,” Amos said. It didn’t matter. 

“Can we go now?” asked one voice, but it was shut down by another.

“You want to go out there? In this heavy rain?” 

“It is no longer deadly to go outside, but I still advise against it. A lot of the houses are damaged and the rain is too heavy to get a good estimate of what needs to be fixed. We can all work together on repairs when the sun comes out. Until then, you’re welcome to be stupid and go home, but home might not be what it was when you left it.” 

“So we’re just supposed to sit here and hope it’s not our house?” 

_ “Or _ you can sit here and be glad it’s not your family.” That shut the guy up. 

“Did anybody die?” came another voice.

“We’re pretty sure no one died.”

“Pretty sure?” 

“There is no one in any of the homes or in the mines, and no bodies in the streets. There aren’t many other places for people to be, unless someone decided to go on a camping trip that you know of?” 

“Not besides you two.” Okay, Holden deserved that. 

“If someone wants to go to the clinic to account for everyone there, we can make that happen safely,” Holden offered. 

“I’ll go,” offered Carol Chiwewe.

“Okay, I’ll escort you.” 

“You say it’s safe?” Holden nodded. “Then I don’t need you. The people here need answers, need safety. You give them that.” 

“Can I send Amos with you?”

“It safe or no? Big man can’t shoot lightning.”

“There’s no lightning.”

“Big man can shoot rain?”

“No.”

“I’ll go alone.” 

Holden walked her to the door and watched her walk to the clinic. He didn’t know what he was scared of, she was right that an escort wouldn’t protect her, and he was sure there was nothing to protect her from. At least not right then. When she was in the clinic, Holden let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. 

Holden fielded what felt like a year of more questions. Yes, the lightning was worse than anything he’d ever seen on Earth. No, it didn’t appear to be supernatural in origin. No, the Barbapiccola was not affected, but no, you can’t call them because the signal is lost. The power wasn’t out because the lightning didn’t hit the power grid this time. There was no telling when the rain would let up. 

When they exhausted the pertinent questions, they became personal.

“Where you get hickey, bossmang?” Amos laughed hysterically at that, and it might as well have been an answer.

“Big guy give you hickey?” 

“You fucking your guard, mediator man?”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Holden barked. “If there are no more questions about the storm, I’m going to… not do this anymore.” 

“Why your beds together on the floor, huh?” they were teasing him now. He should probably welcome the distraction, but he’d prefer it if he didn’t have to  _ be _ the distraction. 

“Don’t you have girlfriend on ship, koyo?”

“Koyo no loyal, eh?” someone joked. 

“Amos? Can you help me here?” Amos was sitting with Wei. Holden wasn’t jealous anymore.

“I think you’re doing just fine, Cap,” he laughed.

“Amos.”

“Alright,” Amos raised his voice, “next guy says something stupid about me and the captain gets his nose broken.” 

That wasn’t exactly what Holden had wanted, but it worked just as well. They shut up about it. 

###  **Amos**

“So, you and Holden, huh?” Wei interrogated. She was completely sober now, just a little bored. 

“Depends what you mean by that, I guess.” 

“You together-together, or just sleeping together?” 

“Sleeping together.”

“Wow.” 

“Sorry.” 

“Don’t be.” 

“Now would probably be an okay time to go meet up with Murtry. They’re probably worried about you.” 

“Right.”

“You didn’t stay because you thought--”

“I stayed because it would’ve been massively stupid to go out in a lightning storm drunk off my ass.”

“Right, good.” 

“So, I’m gonna go now.”

“You want me to walk you?” 

“Big man can shoot lightning?” she parroted Carol from earlier. Amos laughed. 

“Guess not.”

“Okay.” 

She left. 

Holden came to sit down next to him. 

“Messy break up?” 

“Nope.” It wasn’t messy, and it wasn’t a break up. “Do you want to make out?”

“Here? No.” 

“Our room?”

“Full of people.” 

“Can we kick them out?”

“To hook up? No.” Amos was bored. He put his arm around Holden just to see what he would do. He leaned into it, resting his head on Amos’s shoulder. He hadn’t expected that. He guessed it didn’t matter, since everyone already knew. 

“How do you feel?”

“Tired. Little sore. Full of come.”

“Good. Gonna keep you like that.”

“You can’t talk to me like that in a crowded room.” 

“No one’s paying attention.”

“We have to have some kind of boundary.”

“We never did before.”

“Sure we did. The boundary was ‘you can’t fuck me.’”

“Fine, what’s the boundary now?” 

“I don’t know… practice a human amount of discretion?” 

“So I can’t tell everyone all of the graphic details of sex with you?”

“I’d really prefer that you didn’t.” That sucked, he had wanted to give a play-by-play to Alex, make him squirm a little. 

“Okay,” he shrugged. There were a few too many rules for his taste, but he could play by them. Holden knew best. 

“We gotta try and call the Roci.”

“You tryin’ to show off your cute little hickey some more?” Holden just groaned. 

The call connected, and Alex showed up on the screen. 

“Hey, Alex. Just checking in. I don’t know what you can see up there, but we just made it through the worst lightning storm I’ve ever seen.”

“That’s a mighty gruesome lookin’ bruise you got there, Hoss. The lightning do that?” Amos laughed. Holden ignored it.

“Can any of your drone footage tell me if there was any activity from our friendly mystery machines? Miller said it wasn’t protomolecule-related, but I’d like to be more sure.” 

“I can get Naomi to look at it. Is it… okay if I call Naomi over here?”

“What? Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?” Alex scratched his own neck in the same place Holden’s hickey was.

“In case there’s something she, uh, shouldn’t see?” 

“Alex, I am not cheating on Naomi. I could give you more information on that, but I do not want to. Are you going to make me?” 

“Guess I’m not.” 

“Good. And you never have to hide anything from Naomi for me.” 

“What are we hiding from Naomi?” Naomi said from behind Alex. She must’ve been closer than Holden thought. 

“Not Holden’s massive hickey, apparently.” 

“My God, babe. You  _ let _ Amos do that?” 

“Wait,  _ Amos _ did that?” Alex choked on air, and Amos figured this was as good a way to tell Alex as any. Everyone else already knew. 

“Amos did a lot worse that you can’t see,” Amos joked in third person, and Holden elbowed him in the side. 

“What did I say about discretion?” 

“Says the guy with the massive hickey.”

“That’s more your fault than mine.”

“Fellas,” Alex interrupted, “I would like to never think about this again, if that’s alright with y’all. Can we focus on the possible alien threat?” 

“Right. Naomi, can you access the drone footage?”

✧✧✧

The drone footage didn’t show any activity from the machines. That sounded good to Amos, but Holden managed to look on the negative side of it. 

“If we don’t know what caused it, we don’t know how to stop it from happening again,” he argued. 

“And what would you have done to stop it if it  _ had _ been the machines?” 

“Shut up.” 

The rain cleared up, and people were finally allowed to leave the commissary. Most of the colonists left somewhere between a little bit tipsy and full-blown drunk off their ass, which would make things hard when they had to repair the fire damage. 

They got pretty lucky. Only three houses seemed to have even been struck, and the heavy rain must’ve stifled the fires before they could get big. Amos and Holden helped repair the damaged roofs, but there were enough handy Belters that were sober enough and willing to help that it wouldn’t take more than the rest of the day. Everyone could sleep in their own homes tonight, which, to Amos, meant that he and Holden could fool around again. He had predicted that finally getting it done with Holden would make him a little less horny all the time, but instead he was just replaying the scene like a porno in his mind. It was nice background noise as he did some mindless, easy repairs. 

There were huffs among the colonists, complaints that the shelter-in-place order was an overreaction, but Holden didn’t appear to pay them much mind. He gave out a few better-safe-than-sorries and left the issue alone. 

Murtry put out an order that forbade RCE equipment being used by the colony, so Amos got to punch a few people and steal a few things. He felt like a regular Robinhood, stealing from the evil and giving to the disenfranchised. 

The repairs were done by nightfall. 

###  **Holden**

Holden was alone at his table in the commissary poring over drone footage sent from the Roci when Amos came into the commissary, sweaty from a days’ work. 

“Are you still stressing about where lightning comes from?” Amos wrapped his huge arms around Holden’s chest over the back of his chair, resting on him from behind and peeking at the screen in front of him. 

“No, I’m stressing about everything else. I want to not be on this planet anymore.” Amos hummed in understanding but didn’t reply. “Why won’t anyone listen to me? We should all have left a long time ago.” 

“Hard to take you seriously with this work of art on your neck.” For emphasis, Amos leaned in and rubbed his lips against the mark. Holden tilted his head like a dodge action. 

“I’m never letting you near my neck again.” Amos pulled away from him. 

“That’s okay. I can think of plenty of places I can mark that pretty skin up.” Amos gave him a little peck on the lips, and then sat down in the chair next to him. The familiarity of the kiss made something malfunction in Holden’s brain. Kissing Amos deeply and passionately was one of the hottest things Holden ever had the privilege of doing. Being kissed by Amos gently, with no intention of sex behind it? That was a whole different universe of emotions. He wanted to be kissed like that all the time. He couldn’t say that, not soberly, so he didn’t. 

“I just want to be on the Roci.” Amos went and got them each a shot from the belter playing solitaire behind the bar. Holden figured it would be Last Call soon, considering Last Call at the commissary was whenever people cleared out enough that the shopkeep decided the patronage wasn’t worth his time and packed up to go home. He probably figured he could get a couple more sales out of Amos and the other straggling belters with stuff to barter but no one to go home to. Amos took his shot. Holden thanked him for his, but didn’t drink it. 

“Think about it this way, if we were on the Roci, you wouldn’t get to sit on my dick again tonight.” 

“No? You’re gonna stop fucking me when this is all over?” Holden supposed that was how it had to go, but he hadn’t thought of it before and didn’t want to start. 

“You had other plans?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it that far. Guess we’ll have to talk to Naomi about it. That is, if you’re,” he paused, looking for the right word, “down.” It wasn’t the right word. 

“I’m down. Just thought you said you’d rather have sex with her than me.” 

“Maybe that wasn’t the nicest way I could’ve said that. Sorry.”

“We’ve never been nice to each other. No point in starting now.” Amos took Holden’s shot, then got them two more. 

“If I had to choose, yeah, it’d be Naomi. I’m not going to apologize for that. But if I don’t have to choose? Both, ten times out of ten.” 

“What about both at the same time?” 

“God, I wish.” 

“Yeah, baby boy? You wanna be inside her while I’m inside you?” Holden looked at the bartender, who didn’t look up. Either no one in the commissary could hear them, or they didn’t care. 

“Sure, if that’s how you’re picturing it.” 

“But you wanna be spitroasted.” 

“More than anything.” 

“You are such a fucking slut,” Amos accused. Holden blushed, but didn’t protest. “I have this fantasy about you all the time. I don’t know what you’ll think about it. Want to tell you anyway.”

“Am I going to need this shot after?”

“Maybe. Take it anyway. I like you drunk.”

“I am not getting that drunk again.” 

“Good. I’m gonna put my dick in you tonight, and I don’t wanna feel bad about taking advantage of you.” Holden laughed and took the shot. Amos took the other. 

“You have my consent to take advantage.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m yours.” Holden hoped Amos would interpret that as ‘I’m your property and you can fuck me whenever and however you want’ and not ‘I want to belong to you, mind, body, and soul,’ but he wasn’t fully clear on which he actually meant. 

“Shouldn’t say shit like that, Captain. You don’t know what I’m capable of.” There was a darkness to the words that shouldn’t have excited Holden the way it did. 

“What’s your dirty little fantasy?”

“I think about gangbanging you.” Holden didn’t know what crazy shit he expected, but ‘gangbang’ felt tame. 

“That all?” 

“‘That not enough?” 

“A couple of random guys throwing me around, splitting me open? I would be very into that. I mean, in theory.” 

“Not a couple of random guys. Me, Alex, and Naomi.” 

“Oh. Wow.” He considered it. He’d never thought about Alex in a sexual context. He didn’t think he should. Then again, he thought about two-thirds of his crew like that, so what was one more? “I’m gonna need another shot.” Amos got him two, and two for himself. Amos was trying to get him drunk. He could oblige him a little bit. He threw one of them back. 

“What do you think?” 

“As a fantasy or as a possibility? ‘Cause before you get your hopes up, it’s never fucking happening.”

“I know.”

“Is Alex even into guys?” 

“Don’t ruin my fantasy with your logistics.” 

“It’s a hot idea. So he gets my mouth and you get my ass?”

“Usually.”

“Where’s Naomi in all this?”

“She calls all the shots.”

“Fuck. Yeah, okay, I’m into it.” He took another shot. That would be his third. 

“Really? That easy?”

“Yes.” 

“You would take anything I fed you, wouldn’t you?” 

“Yes.” 

“Last night you said you’d eat my ass. Would you really do that?”

“Yes.” 

“Would you like it?”

“Yes.” 

“What would you say no to?” 

“Probably wouldn’t let you piss in my mouth.”

_ “Probably  _ not?” 

“I don’t know. Piss is sterile.” 

“I love it when you talk sterile to me,” Amos joked. “Come sit in my lap.” 

“There are other people here.”

“They’re not paying attention to us.”

“Yeah, because I’m not sitting in your lap. Not drunk enough to do that.” 

“Get drunker, then.” Holden took a fourth shot, and he was starting to feel it. He must’ve had the equivalent of a dozen the night before, but there’d been no way to tell, sipping straight from the bottle. He wouldn’t have been counting anyway. 

“You’re not getting me shitfaced every night.” 

“Just tonight, then.” 

“No way. I’ll have one more, and then I’m going to bed. You are more than welcome to join me.” Amos got a couple more. 

When Holden was pleasantly tipsy but still fully in control of his actions, he told Amos he was going to bed, and there was nothing subtle about the proposition.

“I’ll be there in a sec,” Amos promised. Holden had an idea of what to do in the meantime. 

###  **Amos**

Amos bought the rest of the bottle off of the bartender and let’s-just-say strongly encouraged him to close up shop. The two remaining customers grumbled as they drunkenly made their exits, and the shopkeep with all of his merchandise left quickly behind them. Amos locked the door. 

When he walked into their room, Holden was already naked on his hands and knees and fingering himself open, and Amos was just about ready to convince himself that he was in love. Not because he was, or because he thought he was capable of being so, but because of the way his heart swelled in his chest at the eager obedience of this man he adored. Maybe he loved Holden the way normal Earthers always seemed to love dogs. 

“You bought the whole bottle? I am not drinking any more of that.” Holden was barely drunk. He was tipsy, maybe. 

“Come on, ‘little bit more.” 

“Why do you want me drunk so bad? You know I’ll let you do weird shit to me sober.” 

“I know, slutty boy. But you’re honest when you’re drunk.” Holden seemed offended by that, and Amos didn’t understand why. Holden moved from his hands and knees to a sitting position, and Amos sat next to him. “Sit on my lap, baby.”

Holden grumbled about it, but he obeyed, straddling Amos’s lap so they could sit face-to-face. He was fully naked and Amos was fully clothed. 

“Am I dishonest when I’m not drunk? I’ve never lied to you.” Amos pecked him on the lips. 

“I know, but you hide.” 

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” he dismissed. “I’m not very perceptive.”

“I think you are, and you don’t want to admit it.” That was an interesting theory. Amos wasn’t confident in his ability to perceive things, but he tried. He sought to understand things the way Holden understood them. Or at least he did when it felt pertinent to him. He didn’t try to be oblivious, he just feared that he was. Maybe that’s what Holden was getting at. “What am I hiding?” 

“I don’t know. I think you have feelings you’re not telling me about, but I don’t know what they are.” 

“You worried I’m falling in love with you?” He wasn’t. But the fact that he asked might’ve changed his mind. 

“Not really. But I think maybe  _ you’re _ worried you’re falling in love with me.” 

“It would be bad if I did.” 

“Yeah, probably. Is it a possibility?” 

“I don’t think so. That’s never stopped me from worrying about something before.” 

“Very true.” 

“Can we have this conversation with your dick in my ass?” 

“It would probably be distracting.” 

“Yeah, that’s kind of what I’m going for.” 

“Be patient.” 

“How do you get  _ less _ horny when you drink? I feel like I’m going to crawl out of my own skin if I don’t get fucked like forty-five minutes ago.” 

“I’m not less horny. I’m just not horny enough to not give a shit about you.”

“Since when?” 

“I don’t know. Maybe always.” 

“This was supposed to be just sex.” 

“That’s your problem. You can’t separate sex from friendship.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“You care about me. You enjoy my company.” 

“And you don’t?” Holden interrupted on the defensive. 

“Of course I do. I always liked the hell outta you, Cap. You are the bravest, kindest, fuckin’ righteous-est guy in the whole universe. And you’re funny as shit, too, and fun to be around when you let yourself be. I thought all that before we were fucking. Now we’re fucking, but none of the other shit has changed. The fucking is separate for me. I don’t think you’re capable of that, and I think that’s blowin’ your brain a little bit. Won’t help you to keep hiding that.” Holden sat with that for a second. Amos stroked his hair and didn’t press him to respond. 

“So how do I separate the sex from the friendship?” 

“I think maybe you don’t. I think you gotta just remember that sex plus friendship don’t equal love.” Amos gave him another peck on the lips, more as a comfort than anything else.

“Do that again.” Amos leaned in and went for a longer kiss, but Holden pushed him away. “No, just--” he started, and then demonstrated. Just a chaste press of lips. Or, a press of lips that would be chaste, were he wearing any clothes. Amos pecked him back, and it felt a little weird. It wasn’t how Amos kissed. It was how chickens kissed, and married parents in children’s movies. Holden seemed to get something out of it, so he let it happen. 

“What happens if I fall in love with you?” That was a stupid question, but Holden was naked and vulnerable, looking up at him with wide, fearful eyes like his life depended on the answer.

“I’m not worried about you falling in love with me. I’m worried about you  _ thinking _ you’re in love with me and deciding it means everything has to change between us.” 

“So what happens if I think I’m falling in love with you, then?” 

“You let me know. Even if you’re sober, you’re gonna man up and tell me about it, so we can get you on the phone with Naomi and remind you what love actually is.” 

“Okay.”

“Okay. Now get back on your hands and knees. You’ve been real good tonight, and I’m gonna reward you for it.” 

He did. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, I'm gonna be honest with you. Most of my ideas of what happens from here on out are more horny than reasonable. I'm officially taking requests in the comments. I can't promise to make them all happen, but I wanna have fun with the rest of this fic, so let me know what you'd like to see. If enough people say Roci crew gangbang, I'm not opposed to making that happen.


	9. picnic 2: electric boogaloo

###  **Amos**

Amos looked around through the green tint of his vision, and knew what came next. He was losing his eyesight. It was already bad enough that he wasn’t useful at all. Soon, it would be gone, and they were helpless to stop it. Holden spoke like he was confident they’d fix it, but Amos knew he wasn’t. If he was, it was more blind faith than anything, which was the cruelest pun of the fucking century. Amos fought and fucked his way through life with brute force and a little bit of luck at the exact right times. He didn’t deal with powerlessness well. 

The two of them had been pretty much inseparable for months. Amos had fucked Holden in just about every kinky, creative way he could think of, and he even let Holden have his way with his ass a couple of times. Being close to Holden had been an unexpected comfort that he’d grown to cling to. But now, Holden was the only person in the settlement that still had clear, unclouded eyesight, and soon he’d be the only one with eyesight at all. He was being pulled every which way, between Murtry, the doctors, and Miller, and there was no end in sight. Another cruel, cruel pun. 

Amos had been keeping himself calm by replaying some of his and Holden’s greatest sexual hits. The first time had been perfect, but the second time? Probably the best sex of Amos’s life. Top five, at least. 

Holden had enough shots to get him talking dirty, but he was still fully in control. Amos would come to learn that this was the way he liked Holden the most. Just a little bit loose, but still 100% Holden. Amos always started with his tongue. He loved the way Holden tasted, and how his hole went from the tightest thing he’d ever get to see, to loose and lax underneath his tongue. Holden moaned pretty with a tongue in him, and blushed even prettier. No matter how many times Amos sucked on his rim, Holden always turned pink like a virgin. 

Holden was never coherent enough with Amos’s mouth on him to form sentences, but he was always too far gone to shut up. What resulted was a long line of obscenities and praises, ‘fuck-fuck-fucks’ and ‘oh, Amos, your tongue is going to be the death of- oh my gods.’ It was Amos’s favorite thing to hear. 

Amos would tease him for it, tell him, ‘you are such a slut for a tongue in your ass, aren’t you, Jim? Bet you’d let anyone taste this hole. Should drag your ass into the middle of the settlement and let everyone see how desperate you are for a tongue in this pretty pussy.’ Holden always moaned the loudest when he said shit like that. He’d never let Amos do it, and Amos probably wouldn’t do it if Holden asked for it, ‘cause Holden belonged to him and he didn’t share that easy, but he learned quickly that it was one of Holden’s favorite fantasies. A closet exhibitionist, what a devastating irony. 

When Amos teased him for his talking and moaning, Holden would always try to cover his mouth or suck on something to gag himself, which would always earn him a hard spanking. ‘No gags, baby boy,’ Amos would scold gently, ‘wanna hear your voice.’ And when Holden inevitably tried again, because he loved to be a brat, he’d be harsher, slap him across the face and tell him if he tried that shit one more time, he’d get his hands tied behind his back. That would always earn him a pretty noise. 

Holden always begged to be fucked way before his hole was prepped enough, and Amos loved to deny him. He’d fuck him on one finger long after he was ready for a second, just to hear the pleas drip from his lips. ‘Need you in me so bad, Amos. Don’t want fingers, want your big cock.’ Amos would maybe, maybe slide a second finger in and let his boy suffer on it. 

When it came to getting fucked, Holden always wanted to face Amos. He liked that it hurt more, he liked being kissed during, and he liked to watch. Amos knew this, and fucked him on his hands and knees anyways. He liked that he could fuck Holden harder that way, and it wasn’t always about what Holden wanted. Of course, Amos was actually a big softie when it came to his precious little sub, and Holden was usually a good boy for him, so most of the time, he’d flip him over and finish inside him face-to-face. But that second night, he didn’t. Holden begged him to, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, ‘no, baby boy, want you like this. You’re gonna give me what I want, right? Be a good boy for me and take in on your hands and knees like a dog?’ which turned Holden into a fucking animal. Amos could’ve sworn the captain said something like ‘yes, fucking breed me like a bitch,’ but it was way under his breath, and he wouldn’t admit to it after. Amos thought about it all the time, anyway. 

When Holden was all fucked out and bred like a bitch, Amos laid him out on his back, straddled his face and sucked his dick until he came with his face between Amos’s asscheeks, and that’s how he learned that Holden loved eating ass. 

“What are you thinking about?” Holden startled him. Amos looked in his eyes and only sort of saw them. 

“Fuckin’ you, mostly.”

“Do you ever think about anything else?”

“Everything else sucks to think about right now. Fucking you is good. I like fucking you.” It was an understatement. In fact, he was terrified that once they got back on the Roci and left this shitty planet in their dust, Holden would go back to fucking Naomi and not have a reason to fuck him anymore. He tried not to think about it, but it was always there. 

“I like you fucking me, too.” Holden straddled his lap and kissed him on the lips. It was a peck. Amos had come around on the lip-pecking thing. It was a comfort. Still, he cradled the back of Holden’s head in his hand and pulled him in for a real kiss. Amos closed his eyes. He preferred the blackness to the greenness. It wasn’t often that they kissed like this, slow and languid, like they had all the time in the world. Usually their kisses were urgent, a precursor to sex. If they ever kissed slow like this, it was after sex, swapping come and spit between them and savoring the taste of one another. This was something else entirely. This was two lovers, coming home.

###  **Holden**

“Let’s have sex,” Amos said, and it wasn’t a demand. It was a plea. That was new. 

“Right here?” They weren’t exactly in the middle of everything, but they weren’t alone. 

“No one can see.” 

“Some people still can. You still can.” 

“Yeah. Want your pretty body to be the last thing I can see. Come on, take your clothes off.” 

“How about we find somewhere private and you can do whatever the hell you want to me?”

“How about you shut your mouth and sit on my cock right here?” 

“Amos…” 

“You always want it rough. Don’t want me to prep you too much. I’ll give you that. Sit on me right now, take me fucking raw.” 

“No.”

“Since when do you say no to me?” 

“Since you’re asking for something stupid. Let’s go outside, lay a tarp down, have a picnic.” Amos looked up at him with unfocused, wet eyes and it was the closest Holden had ever got to seeing him cry. It was terrifying. Holden kissed him. “Please, you always take care of me. Let me take care of you.” 

“Fine. A picnic.” 

Holden laid down the tarp to keep away the slugs and Amos sat down on it. They were the only ones outside because it was stupid to be outside. It wouldn’t be the first time, or the last. Holden sat in Amos’s lap. Amos pecked him on the lips. 

“Hey, Jim?”

“Yeah, Burton?” 

“You know our first picnic, a couple months ago?”

“That was a good night.”

“Yeah,” he paused, presumably recalling the memory fondly as Holden was. “Was that a date?” 

“What?” He hadn’t considered it. 

“I don’t know. You packed a bag and took me on a long walk and then we ate and drank on a blanket and watched the sunset and cuddled and then there was a weird walk of shame in the morning. Sounds like a date.” 

“Interesting theory.” 

“I’ve never been on a date before. Was that my first date?” 

“Do you want it to be?” 

“Maybe. Yeah.” 

“Okay. Yeah, that was a date.” 

“Okay. Jim?”

“Yeah, Burton?” 

“You were pretty slutty for a first date.” Holden laughed, and leaned in for another long, deep kiss. He could get real used to kissing Amos like this. “Is this a date, too?” 

“Yes,” he said, without hesitation this time. 

“You gonna put out for me?”

“Yes.” 

“Such a slut. Take your clothes off.” 

Holden did. He was completely naked, out in the open, where anyone could sort-of see him through a hazy green tint, and he was about to let Amos fuck him. At that point, he didn't care if the whole world could see. He needed this like he needed air. 

“Are we going to do the thing where you tell me to get on my hands and knees and I beg you to let me face you?” Holden asked.

“No. In my lap. Wanna look at you, baby boy.” Holden's heart just about melted.

Amos pulled one of his many packets of lube from his pocket like a magic trick. Holden had stopped being surprised that Amos always had the stuff handy months ago. Holden would mock him for it, and he’d dismiss it with some line like ‘gotta be ready to keep my slut happy.’ Holden was immensely grateful for it.

Amos didn’t talk through prepping him, which was unfamiliar territory. Amos always talked dirty. It wasn’t awkward without it, just different. It was intimate in a way it never had been before. Vanilla, but not in a bad way. With Amos silently working him open, looking at him with worshipful eyes and treating him like he might break at any second, Holden almost forgot they were just friends. They weren't. They were something else entirely. Not lovers, not boyfriends, not brothers, not friends. They were Jim Holden and Amos Burton. It was its own thing. 

Holden missed the sound of Amos's voice. 

“Come on, Burton. Wanna hear you. Tell me I’m a good boy.” 

“You are a good boy, Jim. Always a fucking good little boy for me.” 

Holden rode Amos just like that, face to face. The only sounds passing between them were soft moans and pants. Their lips connected passionately in bursts that never lasted long, pulling apart to gasp for breath or simply to look at each other while they grinded together as one body. Holden thought, not for the first time, that he was in love. He kissed Amos again instead of saying something about it. 

“You feel so good, Amos. Always so fucking good. Come in me.” Amos wrapped his hand around Holden’s cock, jerked him off while he came. 

“You gonna wear my come inside you while you save the world, Captain?” 

“Yes. Yes. Fuck, yes,” he chanted like a mantra as he bounced through Amos’s orgasm. Holden came not long after. 

Neither man moved to get up when they were finished. They kissed every time like it would be their last. Holden wondered if Amos thought it would be. He wouldn’t let that happen. He was going to save the whole fucking universe, get their eyesight back, and get them the hell off of Ilus. 

And so he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The End! Sequel to follow.

**Author's Note:**

> twitter: @warren_space


End file.
